Examination of Witnesses (Questions 680-699)
MR RAJINDER
SINGH SANDHU,
RABBI MARK
KAMPF, MR
TIM MILLER
AND MS
RACHEL ALLARD
11 DECEMBER 2006
Q680 Chairman: It reflects the balance
in your community?
Mr Miller: Very much so, yes,
I would think so.
Q681 Chairman: Rajinder Singh, are
all the pupils in your school Sikhs?
Mr Singh Sandhu: We have students
from the Islam faith, Hindu faith, we have got our first Christian
child in the primary school. Until recently, if the school has
become oversubscribed, we have actually been very active in ensuring
that the school reflects the community.
Q682 Chairman: What is the percentage
of Sikhs compared with other students?
Mr Singh Sandhu: It is about 95%,
at the moment, and that is mainly because, the school is so heavily
oversubscribed we are having to go by the criteria which the governors
have been looking at in parallel with the decisions being made
in Parliament, in seeing how the admissions criteria could be
changed so that the school reflects the community outside.
Q683 Chairman: Free school meals?
Mr Singh Sandhu: It is about 10
or 11%.
Q684 Chairman: Rachel; what about
your school?
Ms Allard: Until fairly recently,
the school was a mixture, which occurred by accident, because
it had admissions criteria for Church of England, until we realised,
a number of years ago, actually, by oversubscription, as you have
described, that was creating a school where all the children were
Church of England. The governors changed the admissions criteria
to allow for some open places, some non Church of England Christian
places; we also have students who come, because we are a language
college, by language aptitude, so that there are opportunities
for a larger number and a broader range to come into the school.
That has been in operation for about three years, so that is growing
up the school, and greatly to the benefit of the students also.
Q685 Chairman: What percentage of
free school meals would you have?
Ms Allard: We have about 9%, at
the moment. I think that does not really reflect our population
though. The PANDA put us in the top 17% of the country for deprivation,
but many of our students go out to lunch because we do not have
enough dining space to provide lunch for them all. I think there
are numbers who probably would qualify but do not bother to claim.
Chairman: Thank you very much for those
introductory remarks.
Q686 Jeff Ennis: Mark and Rachel
emphasised in their opening comments, Chairman, the cross-curricular
approach that they took to citizenship education. Rajinder, could
you also indicate whether you took a cross-curricular approach?
Mr Singh Sandhu: It goes beyond
a cross-curricular approach. I said at the beginning about the
whole-school approach and how it is intertwined with RE, intertwined
with the whole ethos of the school, which is actually going out
to help others. The school teaches quite passionately that kids
put others before themselves, that humility is a place of strength.
One of the things which worried us at the beginning, in 1993,
when the school was opened, about the concepts which have earlier
been touched upon, indoctrination, and so on, in fact, I think,
along with some schools in the country, our assemblies, both at
primary level and secondary level, are run by the kids, there
are no priests involved, the kids run their own assemblies. I
speak at the end or a member of the senior team and that sets
the tone throughout the school. The sixth-formers help in every
aspect of the school life. They do not do it because it is enjoyable,
or anything, it is an aspect of helping others. Another thing,
if I could mention it, is that currently the school has a huge
building programme, at £16 million; as a voluntary-aided
school, we are responsible for 10% of it. That is an issue, as
the governors have been raising money, but as a school population
rather than resort to asking the kids to help in different ways
the kids have never been asked once to raise money for the school.
Instead, they have been funding the maintenance of an orphanage
in Colombia, and, through Oxfam, they have built classrooms in
Kenya. My point is that very often citizenship runs right throughout
the whole school; it is the ethos of the school.
Q687 Jeff Ennis: Given that every
different school before us at this moment in time takes a cross-curricular
approach to citizenship education, is there any aspect of citizenship
education which does not lend itself to being taught on a cross-curricular
basis, or does it all fit neatly into that sort of approach?
Rabbi Kampf: It does not all fit
neatly into a cross-curricular approach, which is why I said that,
within our RE—which we call Jewish education—the moral,
ethical part, which was touched on before we arrived here, what
we are doing currently within our faith teachings is about critical
thinking, which is about moral and social dilemmas, and citizenship,
in a sense, simply dovetailed with that. The moral framework and
the discussion fit very well within what we are doing currently
within the faith education; we also teach part of the curriculum,
if you look at it, it is the PSHE curriculum, so that fits together.
When you say does it fit neatly, it does not fit neatly, the curriculum
is crowded and we try to identify what teachers are teaching currently,
and we felt, as Tim said a few minutes ago, we do not want to
take the approach "Let's stop what we are doing now. Now
we're going to be good citizens, and teaching citizenship, that's
enough of that, now we're going to move on to real life, which
is getting our results that we need to get because that is what
we are judged on." We do not want to take that approach;
we want the children to feel that it is part of the school, it
is quite right for you to be involved in the school community
and outside the school community.
Q688 Jeff Ennis: I do not know whether
Rajinder or Rachel have got anything to add to what Mark said,
in terms of that question?
Ms Allard: I feel that when we
first did our audit we found that the vast majority of work did
find a home in a cross-curricular way and that where it was not
already happening one could find places for it. You can ask a
maths department to create the financial literacy elements that
you want to introduce, for example. That does not mean it is all
easy to do. I think it is easy to fit in but the teachers in each
of the different subjects do have a particular subject way of
looking at what they are teaching and there are training issues.
If we want to continue in this way, we will need to look very
closely at how they really bring out what are the specific citizenship
aspects of the topics that they are being asked to cover, and
those are big training issues, I think, you cannot minimise them.
At the same time, if we look at possibly moving to the alternative
model of having specialist citizenship teachers and a particular
slot, our timetable is a very, very crowded one and to find a
place where you can reduce something so as to create a new slot
and employ new teachers to teach in that slot is a challenge that
we do not find is any easier to deal with, and perhaps would be
less easy to deal with. As a language college, we teach languages
for all up to GCSE and 60% do two languages; those things take
time. As a church school, we teach RE and it would have a vast
amount of the citizenship curriculum within it; that would go
up to GCSE for all students. We are not looking at a curriculum
which has a lot of space for introducing new, separate topics,
but I do not think one can minimise the challenge of making sure
that teachers who are doing citizenship in a cross-curricular
way really are dealing with the issues as the citizenship curriculum
expects them to be dealt with.
Q689 Jeff Ennis: Thank you for that.
I think, Tim, in your opening remarks, you mentioned that your
school has got a school council, and I understand that all three
schools giving evidence at the moment operate school councils.
I am just wondering how significant a role you feel that school
councils are playing in delivering the citizenship education agenda
in schools; how important is it to have a school council to help
do that?
Mr Miller: I think it is exceptionally
important. I think it plays a very important role. I think, in
the first instance, one is looking at how it has a role in relation
to political literacy. We have a student council which has all
its representatives in the years from seven up to 11 elected by
their year groups. It is chaired by the head boy/girl team, who
are themselves elected by the whole of the sixth form, the staff
and the year 11 prefects. That is the electoral college for that,
and it is given very high status, I think, by the fact that when
there are meetings these are attended by usually almost all the
members of the senior leadership team, always the headteacher
at the meeting, and when an agenda is arranged by the head boy/head
girl team, in conjunction with our student leadership co-ordinator,
a member of staff, who is herself a politics teacher so has a
role in that respect as well, they will perhaps wish to raise
an issue about, I do not know, IT and will go to the head of IT
to not quite summon him before the student council but invite
him to come along in order to respond to the debate which takes
place. While we would not say that we have a system of accountability
on the part of staff, I think that would be exaggerating, I do
think there is an acknowledgement that staff engage with the student
council, and that is effective. The student council is an area
for which I also have some responsibility and I think there is
much more we can do in making it more visible across the school
and things we can do there. I do think it is very important to
have that as an element in political literacy and anything which
addresses issues of community responsibility too. It also opens
up to students issues of decision-making and what would be the
consequences of if we did that, why they do that, and those kinds
of dilemmas, I think, are very important to confront students
with.
Q690 Jeff Ennis: Do you think there
is a possibility that schools ought to be considering allowing
representatives from school councils to attend school governing
body meetings in an observation capacity, or indeed to sit on
as an associate member of a governing body?
Mr Miller: I know that some schools
do that. We have a particular involvement that the governing body
has a catering sub-committee, and in order to avoid the student
council being tied down all the time over "Should we have
this on the school menu or not?" we have student representatives
on that governors sub-committee. Certainly, when we are appointing
senior members of staff, although students are not sitting on
the appointments committee, we do always make sure that visitors
to the school, applicants, have an informal lunch or session with,
for instance, members of the head boy/girl elected team.
Q691 Jeff Ennis: Would that level
of school council involvement apply to the other two schools?
Mr Singh Sandhu: Yes, we have
quite an active student council. If I may just go to the earlier
question of citizenship, I think schools which have run good citizenship,
or it is really cross-curricular, that if we have good teachers
who actually are well trained in that respect I think we are fortunate.
Some schools cannot do it because of the teacher training there.
Going on to the student council, we actually run it like this,
we are sitting here, that is the way it is run by a very good
member of staff and the school is involved in the Jack Petchy
award, where £300 a month is given to a particular student
who makes an effort. A student councillor decides how actually
to use that award and is very much involved in a lot of it. We
have not graduated onto the governing bodies yet, but that is
under consideration. They have also been involved in a dialogue
with a local councillor on issues in the neighbourhood, particularly
on environmental issues so they are very much involved. I think
the local councillor was put though their paces by the student
council which is very, very active within the school.
Ms Allard: I would say that our
student council is also a very important forum for learning the
role of democracy and the way it works. One of the things which
is happening at the moment at our school is that the student council—and
we have three because we are on two sites and they have Lower
School, Upper School and Sixth Form Councils—they are considering
the student councils' constitution, how that should properly be.
One of the challenges is to work something out which would then
be applied across the school and would be the best way, for example,
of electing the members of the school council and how they should
proceed. It is a very formative experience for them to be thinking
about these things and creating their own constitution. We also
do similar things to what was mentioned at the Jewish Free School,
we do have involvement of our students in senior appointments,
though not all appointments, and our head girl is invited to meetings
of the governing body.
Q692 Mr Carswell: Towards the end
of the last session there was a very interesting series of questions
and answers about Britishness and multiculturalism, and, if I
may, I want to put some of those questions to you; as headteachers
of faith schools, I would be very interested in your perspective.
For a long time, the notion of Britishness has been defined, some
may say redefined, by officialdom in terms of multiculturalism;
we are being told constantly we are a multicultural country. It
is implicit that there is a sort of cultural relativism to being
British, yet there is now a very interesting debate taking place
about multiculturalism. Trevor Phillips has said some very interesting
things; Mr Blair said some very interesting things. If there was
a wholesale re-evaluation of multiculturalism, would it have any
impact in terms of how you approach citizenship? Do you think
that this debate on what is and what is not multiculturalism would
affect the way you, as a faith school, teach citizenship?
Ms Allard: I will have a go. It
is a tough one. We feel that our school is the primary community
for our children and it is an accepting community, all children
are welcome, and what they bring is part of what all of us can
benefit from; so I suppose, in that sense, you would say it is
a multicultural perspective. We also have a shared history, it
is a 300 year old school, as I mentioned, and one of the things
that I always do with year seven is teach them that 300-year history,
and to find that they have this shared history fascinates them,
they all love to know that they all belong to this institution
and that they are all part of it and they inherit it as a group.
They come from all over, we have a huge range in our school of
cultural backgrounds, but they love to join in sharing that history.
I think perhaps, in microcosm, that is a kind of expression of
what the debate within this country might be. When we ask our
students what their cultural adherence is, many of them do define
themselves as British. Whatever their further cultural origin
might be in relation to their grandparents and parents, many of
them will define themselves as British.
Mr Miller: I think Rachel mentioned
the school being the primary community and I think, in JFS, one
can see a series of circles that go ever outwards from the school
to their own Jewish community, to certainly a sense of Britishness
and beyond that. A number of our students, quite a number, I do
not have any exact figures, come from a range of places around
the world; we have a lot of South African students, a lot of students
have come from, in terms of their family background, not necessarily
themselves, Iraq, Iran, from Israel, and that I think creates
an international flavour, to an extent, as well. Certainly we
want them to be aware of an international context to their lives.
As I said in the opening remarks, one of the things that the school
also strives to do is ensure that students are certainly as aware
of the sense of their faith as they are of their sense of Britishness.
We have no issue about their sense of Britishness, or, at least,
Englishness, if you look at how quickly people are out of the
building to go and watch England World Cup football matches, they
certainly have that. I think the other thing which is important
is that we do lay a lot of stress on students of respect for their
history; we have both exhibitions about Holocaust and every summer
we have a group of veteran soldiers who come in to do if not all
the history lessons about their experiences in mostly the second
world war and meet with year nine, year 10 students about this.
There is a sense of respect for the past and certainly, after
what Rachel said about the history of the school, which is a very
long one, again that is something which I think is an attractive
element for the students and gives them a context and a place
and a rooting within a continuum, that they are there now and
many of their parents were in the school and some of their grandparents
were at the school when it used to be in the East End.
Mr Singh Sandhu: I think, as one
of the younger schools, we face an opposite dilemma really, that
the bulk of our children are fourth, fifth generations coming
into the school and are very much British through and through,
but what they seem to have lost actually is what Sikhism stands
for. One of the main reasons is that the parents have endeavoured
to take them to a Gurdwara at the weekends, etc, and because the
priests have not been able to have a dialogue with them in English,
as most of the kids could not understand Punjabi, particularly
at the sort of level which reading from the Holy book requires.
The actual concept of what Sikhism stands for has been lost through
and through. They seem to think that just wearing symbols is what
Sikhism is about, and I think what the school has done actually
is confirm their values, one could say, that this religion stands
for respect for the religion, stands for doing good to others,
and so on. I think it sort of helped the school, but, as far as
the Britishness is concerned, that has never been an issue within
the school.
Ms Allard: I would like just to
add something, if I may. I spoke at first very much from the welcoming
in of the little ones and I would like to add that one of the
things that we lay a lot of stress on as they grow older is developing
the outward-looking aspect. I warmed very much to what was said
about the fact that schools in London inevitably are international
schools, they are composed of not only students who define themselves
as British but many who come from many other places and perhaps
will stay for only a short time. The place of Britain in Europe
and Britain in the world, represented by the United Nations, for
example, is something that we need students to think about and
we do work towards. In the sixth form every year they will model
the United Nations or model the European Union General Assembly,
or Parliament, or whatever, to help them see their place in the
wider world as well as being welcomed into our smaller world.
Q693 Mr Carswell: I know I am very
fortunate to have been invited to go and speak at a number of
schools about our relationship with the European Union. Given
that an important element of citizenship is that, as the people
who live on this island, we can have a shared narrative, a shared
island story, do you think that citizenship and inculcating a
sense of citizenship, instead of celebrating diversity perhaps
what we need to do is celebrate achievement, the achievements
of the West generally but of Britain in particular: cultural achievements,
medical achievements, technological achievements, philosophical
achievements? Do you think that citizenship needs to be more a
question of celebrating our achievements as a country than emphasising
divisiveness?
Rabbi Kampf: You can define citizenship
any way you like, I suppose, but that is not how we interpret
it anyway. It is not about necessarily celebrating, as we look
at it. The question is based on the first question as well. It
is about, I think, giving students educationally a sense of self-respect
and respect for others and participation in a community. That
seems to me the heart of citizenship, and then the question is
what is the methodology for delivering it; achievement is the
method that achieves. Again, it is not about knowledge, good,
we achieve A, we do B, that does not change action. We look at
citizenship as not having acquired knowledge, though it is about
knowledge, and it is not even necessarily about attitudes, which
is difficult in a school to change anyway. Cynicism says, society
has problems; go into schools and let them deal with it. Okay,
thanks, so we will try to change attitudes; but, again, it is
how we change, with what the Jewish faith is about, it is about
participation, which is about what citizenship is, how we become
positive, proactive, citizens in the local community, to the person
sitting next to you, to your classmate, to your school, your family,
out. To me, it is about the education, it is more than teaching,
it is about changing attitudes, which leads to a change of behaviour.
Therefore, what you are suggesting is a methodology to get there
perhaps which may not be valid. If it becomes law and that is
what we have to do, we will all do it, and you will ask us how
we are doing and we are doing fine. Is it achieving its ends,
I am not sure. Within the Jewish faith there is a law which says
that in whichever country Jews find themselves they need to adhere
to the law of that country. That is not for debate; that is the
way it goes. How do you define your Britishness: "Here you
are, guys, this is the framework we're in; let's go with it."
In our school, and I am speaking only for our school, we need
to say, as Tim said, we want to root you in your Jewishness and
to play a full part in society, a positive role there. So I have
not answered your question 100%, other than saying I am not sure
of the outcomes.
Mr Singh Sandhu: I agree whole-heartedly
with Mark and I think if we looked at, citizenship guidelines,
and what is the aim, we would find it is to produce good citizens,
if it is to produce really good citizens they need models, models
to aspire to and models of good citizens. The strands which come
out of it would be social, would be moral, would be on the political
debate, it would be real role models who have helped out others.
Those would be the sorts of people that kids would aspire to be,
and that would be the sort of thing you are looking at in the
product of your guidelines.
Chairman: I sometimes wonder, when people
talk about our island story, whether my ancestors are included.
I am from a Huguenot background and we were sort of washed up
on the shore. Do we get included? We are included, are we: jolly
good.
Q694 Mr Marsden: You have all laid
emphasis on the fact that in all of your schools, and I well understand
this, citizenship is embedded in the ethos and everything else
that you try to do in the school, but I wonder if there is one
aspect of the current citizenship education debate or the curriculum
that you would miss, as it were, if you did not have it embedded
in your school. What would it be; what is there that the citizenship
education debate has made you change, if I can put it another
way, the way in which you do things in your school?
Ms Allard: I think perhaps we
have been challenged to be more specific about the sorts of things
that children might learn about the way democracy is organised
in this country, for example. We would say that they are learning
to think about democracy and how to do things in the way that
we do things in the school, the school councils and so on, but
we make sure now that we do have some experience, like a model
United Nations, every year. We do not do it some years, we do
it every year, there are things that we do every year and with
all the students, which before might have been left more to chance,
I think.
Q695 Mr Marsden: It is a more systematic
approach?
Ms Allard: It is more systematic,
yes; for example, activities for charity even. We now have a charity
week for each year group and every class in that year group must
do something on one day of the week, and the method by which they
discuss it and decide it will be helping them to learn all the
various aspects of how you debate and decide in citizenship. It
will not be just the enthusiasts; everybody will be getting involved
and these experiences will be for all.
Q696 Mr Marsden: Tim and Mark, is
it about putting tents of information across, which perhaps you
did not put across previously?
Mr Miller: As Mark said in his
opening comments, it is about, as we started off some years ago,
initially doing an audit, looking at what we did within the aspect
of social and moral responsibility; that was very much implicit
in what the school did anyway. I think we have become much more
conscious of the need to look at issues like community involvement,
political literacy, as time has gone on.
Q697 Mr Marsden: I am sorry to interrupt.
Is that something which has come specifically out of the original
Crick Report and the Government's recommendations, or is
it something which perhaps you would have done anyway?
Mr Miller: It is difficult to
answer that. The Crick Report and the recommendations in
relation to citizenship education are themselves drawn from where
society was going and the mood of the times, I think, in a way,
as well, and a recognition of the kind of multicultural society
in which we live. It is a bit of a chicken and egg situation perhaps
there. In relation to charity, for instance, we look at what each
year group should be working on, and again try to move students
from perhaps a very specific issue in relation to charity, just
raising money for something quite local and specific in the younger
years, to ensuring that in the older years students are actually
taking the lead in organising, devising and planning ways in which
a charitable activity can be run and taking responsibility for
it.
Q698 Mr Marsden: It is moving from
passive to active?
Mr Miller: Yes; and a seven-year
strategy across the year groups for how we want students to be
exposed to different aspects of what broadly one would call citizenship
at different stages of their education. As I say, at the end point,
when they are in year 13 and going ahead to university, we want
to try to reflect in our references the contributions they have
made, and we see that as a very important element in selling the
student, if you like, to the particular institutions to which
they are applying.
Q699 Mr Marsden: Rajinder, you said,
a few moments ago, that one of the issues for you had been, when
I think my colleague asked about Britishness, that you wanted
to emphasise Sikhism because you felt that had become, for a number
of reasons, somewhat diluted. Again, is there something which
has come out of the Crick Report, the National Curriculum,
which has made you say "We really must do that in our school
that we weren't doing five or six years ago"?
Mr Singh Sandhu: I think some
of the points Rachel made, about formalising it and setting the
structures in place, and the starting-point for us was having
a very good member of staff to have leadership in that particular
area. The areas which we left out, and which have now been formalised,
are environmental issues, dialogue for the children and the local
politicians, local neighbourhood issues, etc.; that has come in
more, which probably would not have happened if the recent guidance
had not come into place.
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