Sunday, September 15, 2013

Tough love for school troublemakers

"No, you can't go there!" exclaims Mitchell, who's married to a fellow teacher, and has three daughters, aged 13, eight and six. But his broad grin suggests that he's not totally averse to this attention.

"There've only been a few thousand comments," he demurs. "I've been called a TILF [meaning "Teacher I'd like to ----"], though I'm sure the people saying it are all 55 and greying and haven't got their own teeth. Heat magazine emailed asking if I'd be its pin-up. And there's been quite a lot of interest from the male species. It's very, very uncomfortable," he says, looking distinctly relaxed. "I'm a portly, almost middle-aged, balding geek. It's got to have something to do with my authority."

On that, Mitchell's completely right. Aged 41, tall and – apart from the stubble – hair-free, he looks like a bouncer yet radiates matinee-idol charisma. On the first day of term, the cameras caught him shimmying across his office to Let's Face the Music and Dance. His firm but affectionate interactions with his pupils have made the programme a huge hit, attracting more than three million viewers.

But while no one could fail to be impressed by Mitchell's and his staff's dedication and patience, what is unsettling is how – at least so far in the series – they pay far more attention to troublemakers than to diligent pupils.

In the second episode, shown last week, Jac, a motivated, serious child, was sent to "isolation" (working in a unit alone) after losing his temper. But, to the outrage of social-media commentators, Georgia, the "cool" girl who'd provoked him, went mostly unpunished.

"That showed us making a human error," Mitchell shrugs. "That's what life is like. We're not these arbiters who get things right all the time. What it does show is how staff bend over backwards to try and make the lot of the kids as good as possible."

But perhaps they bend over too much. When asked if she feared the head, Georgia smirked: "It's not like he can smack me and send me to bed, is it?" And in episode one,

14-year-old Kamrrem was sent to Mitchell's office for misbehaviour for the 73rd time – a somewhat extreme example of a second chance.

"We keep giving [disruptive children] more chances because if we exclude them, someone else is going to have to educate them and deal with them," explains Mitchell, who has been running the school for two years, his first job as a head. "Kamy is a really good kid who just gets it wrong sometimes. If he makes the mistakes he makes outside school when he's 16, his life is ruined. He needs to make mistakes in a controlled environment where we can support him."

Great for Kamrrem – but how will the parents who had complained about him feel? Mitchell explains that Kamrrem and his ilk might not be kicked out, but they might not return to the classroom, either, instead being sent – under the school's supervision – on vocational courses.

"These kids are not college fodder – they're the kind of people who, maybe 10 years ago, would have gone straight onto the dole and got a council house, tried to get a baby as soon as possible. Being sat in a classroom five days a week will make them kick off because they can't cope with the cooped-up atmosphere and the standards, so we try to find the education more akin to the kind of work they'll end up doing."

As for the well-behaved pupils: "We send postcards home praising them, we invite parents in and congratulate them on their child's behaviour." On the day I visit the school, children with good behavioural and attendance records (83 per cent of them) are on a reward trip to Alton Towers, while the troublemakers, already familiar from the television, skulk the corridors, rolling their eyes at staff who order them to turn down their sleeves.

Allowing cameras from the team that had made the hugely popular Educating Essex into his school was a gamble for Mitchell. Thornhill sits on a windswept estate outside Dewsbury, one of the most deprived towns in Britain.

At Thornhill, an unlovely collection of prefabs, around 30 per cent of the pupils come from single-parent homes, and 42 per cent have been on free school meals in the past six years, compared with a national average of 16 per cent. At one point, the school was almost closed, after being rated one of the worst in the country.

But in the past five years, exam results have improved. The school is now rated "good" by Ofsted, and is in the top 6 per cent nationally for progress made by pupils. But it still only has around 774 pupils, when it was built to house 900, meaning a loss of potential funding. "I did the programme to improve numbers, and it's working. In the past week alone, some kids have already transferred from other schools."

Mitchell is the Dewsbury-born son of an ambulance worker and a midwife, though now he lives 20 miles away in Pontefract: "It makes me feel a traitor – like Sean Connery." At his comprehensive nearby, he was "a very happy geek".

"I was unctuous, used to get in early to make a cup of coffee for my teacher," he recalls. "I wasn't popular. Most of the kids thought I was a greasy swot." He found his feet socially at sixth form college and even more so at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, where he studied interpreting and translating.

His original ambition was to teach, but he was warned off by teachers at his school who told him he was "too clever". He became an accountant but was quickly "bored stiff". Mitchell retrained and, from the moment he began his first placement in Leeds, teaching French, knew this was his vocation.

"After seeing the programme, so many people have told me 'I could never do your job' – but teachers do it because they love it," he says. "You can't learn to teach, you've got to have something in you, a bit of buzz."

But Educating Yorkshire gives the strong impression that teaching, at least at Thornhill, isn't so much about imparting knowledge as policing. Mitchell says that about 65 per cent of his time spent with pupils is for "negative reasons". But should teachers really be spending so much time on discipline? Isn't that the parents' job?

"We have a lot of big families round here, it is tough. The parents are pulled every which way. You could make your own comments about that kind of social environment, but I will not, it wouldn't be appropriate. Sometimes when you're looking in the parents' eyes, you see the message 'Help me be better', and this is what we try and do."

The school's ultimate sanction (eventually meted out – hooray! – to Georgia) is exclusion from the end-of-year "prom", an American concept that makes Mitchell wince. "We'd prefer to call it the end-of-year disco, but there you have it. It's obscene, but the kids love it. I had to tell Kamy's mother that her older son wasn't going because he'd verbally abused a police officer. She was practically begging me to change my mind, because she'd spent thousands on hiring a Ferrari to take him there. And they're on free school meals!"

Despite his star being in the ascendant, Mitchell has no plans to leave Thornhill. But after all his graft, how does he feel watching the scene in the first programme where 15-year-old Kayleigh refused to accept her punishment for smoking, with the complaint: "I'm not having [Mitchell] thinking he can do what he ------- wants"?

"Kayleigh's apologised to me for that. I said there's no need, you said it to one of your best friends, not me. She's a lovely kid and she'd had a bad day." Mitchell chuckles. "Though, I admit, for about 15 seconds I did think: 'You cheeky little ----bag, I'll get you!'."

'Educating Yorkshire' is on Channel 4 on Thursdays, 9pm

Source : http://telegraph.feedsportal.com/c/32726/f/568414/s/313e245d/sc/38/l/0L0Stelegraph0O0Cculture0Ctvandradio0C10A30A92120CTough0Elove0Efor0Eschool0Etroublemakers0Bhtml/story01.htm