What does a schools commissioner do?
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20 / 11 / 2009 | Author: dnorris
What does a schools commissioner do?
As job descriptions go, that of finding out what children think, ranks as one of the strangest.
That is what Sir Al Ainsley-Green has been doing since 2005 using the title of The Schools Commissioner.
All along it has been an odd assignment, mainly because there was never a proper definition of what was expected from the commissioner. He was never told what to do, although he was told what not to do. In short he was able to set his own agenda as long as he kept away from policing the individual rights of children.
In fact that turned out not to be a hindrance because there was still a wealth of issues concerning young people that lay under the radar of most other enquirers.
He didn’t have the power and authority of an ombudsman. What he did have was the ability to demand answers from statutory bodies. He also undertook the task of conducting in depth interviews with children themselves, and that was something out of the ordinary.
He spend a lot of time interviewing children, sifting through their remarks and tying to focus on the issues which came to the surface. It was time well spent because it was the best way of finding out what it was like to be on the receiving end of all the school measures that had been devised and put in place by adults.
He found out what it felt like to be stigmatised. Most adults think that young people are responsible for at least half of all crime whereas the figures show that they only commit 12% of all offences.
He also found out that a lot of the measures put into place to deal with young people who were having difficulties were in fact more appropriate for adults.
There are approximately 11 million children in school in England. That is a lot of children, but their biggest gripe was that of being subject to generalisations. Although many children spend up to 15000 hours of their early life in school few expressed many qualms about tests, exclusions or special needs. Indeed the issues that were raised were not related to specific school activities at all.
Al Ainsley-Green set about identifying real causes that affected real children. He would accumulate undeniable facts. Put them together as irrefutable evidence and then make sure that important people were targeted with that information so that the issues could be resolved.
One of the first real issues related to the treatment of gypsy and travelling families. He found that their experiences at the hands of the youth justice system were very far from what was to be expected.
It was not a direct consequence of this line of enquiry, but one closely related, which came high on the agenda of inner city children. They felt that the ‘stop and search’ powers that the police had was being used disproportionately on young people. It was, but to young people the implication was much more. They did not command any respect at all from bodies such as the police. He was able to show that such a policy was becoming counter productive.
The unregulated sighting of devices that emit high pitched noises, audible only to the young was another example of the indiscriminate targeting of young people. They were being stigmatised as trouble makers simply because they congregated where others did not want them to gather.
Issues such as healthy eating, physical punishment, how bereavement affects children, measures concerning the schooling of refugees and the plight of young offenders all came under his scrutiny.
There is a naive simplicity about these methods of gathering evidence that many a fact finding body would do well to copy.
If you ask any child in a school “Who is the best teacher?” there will be a strong consensus.
The criteria set by inspectors are very rigid and allow little scope for judgemental or whimsical values.
By a strange coincidence the outcomes hardly vary.
That is the value of the schools commissioner.
His mission was to uncover some of the causes which affect children in their school years. His sole means of identifying those causes was by talking to the children themselves.
It was an inspired thing to do and it did unearth some unexpected results. Such a post would be invaluable in many developing countries.
