The Standards Site: George Green's School

About the School:

George Green’s School is a voluntary controlled, mixed comprehensive situated on the Isle of Dogs. The school is multi-cultural, multi-lingual and multi faith. Ethnically the school is made up of 50% white ESW and 30% Bangladeshi. The remaining 20% is comprised of Chinese, Somali, Afro-Caribbean and other African. There are an equal number of boys and girls. 100 pupils have a Statement of Special Educational Need and 250 additional pupils have been identified as having Special Educational Needs. George Green’s has an attendance of 91%.

It is a very popular school and has been oversubscribed for the last 6 years.

Features of the Area:

The London Borough of Tower Hamlets has a culturally and ethnically diverse population of approximately 160,000 inhabitants. Recent socio-economic analyses have identified Tower Hamlets as one of the poorest authorities in the country, although Docklands and Canary Wharf developments highlight the dramatic contract that can exist in the Borough between areas of wealth and poverty. One in three homes has no wage earner, half of all homes receive council tax benefits, and only 11 per cent of the population have higher education qualifications. Levels of adult literacy and numeracy are the lowest in the country. Seventy per cent of Secondary school pupils are entitled to free school meals, a figure that is over three times the national average. The proportion of pupils for whom English is an additional language is the highest in the country, and a total of 78 community languages are spoken in schools. Although many pupils in Tower Hamlets suffer the consequences of poverty and poor housing, this does not mean that they have low educational aspirations. Their parents and their schools are usually ambitious for them and the majority are anxious to succeed.

What this case study is about:

The Unity ‘Cru’ project aimed to integrate students from the different ethnic backgrounds, to understand and to get to know each other’s cultures through a residential and subsequent Study Support activities.

The project came about, from the racial problems that were occurring in the school and in the local community. This case study shows that some staff in school are still prepared to take risks through extended school activities in order to achieve learning opportunities for young people. It also shows that effective partnerships and hard work can have an outstanding impact on every involved. The Unity Cru project is an excellent example of this.

Belfast was chosen because of similar problems, which has divided Northern Ireland's Community. The school wanted the pupils out of their comfort zone and put into an environment, which no one could claim as their territory. This enabled pupils to think and focus a lot more ‘outside the box’, which gave the opportunity for them to explore the differences and the similarities between our pupils and the people of a divided Community.

The school also wanted pupils to open their eyes and see first hand that, if problems continued, then it may well end up like

Northern Ireland

. This project is also just one example of the steps the school takes in order to deal with conflicts, whether its racial, gang or faith related.

When pupils arrive at the destination, they are split into groups of 12, including 2 staff members, to go into a house. The group is carefully hand picked, so students are put in houses away from their friends, and put in with pupils they have or had conflict with. Pupils are also ethnically and gender mixed, which is known to the ‘Unity Cru’ as the “MIX IT CIRCLE”. Each house has to then set up a rota and volunteer for cooking, cleaning, shopping etc, for the week.

Throughout the week the houses compete against each other for points, through various team building activities and intense drama based workshops. Every day each house gets a balance of £20, which has to feed a house of twelve, not only for breakfast, but also for lunch as well as dinner! Then every evening each group prepares a shopping list for the house, taking into consideration some of the student’s dietary requirements. Two students from each house go down to the local supermarket to do the shopping, in a certain amount of time, without going over the budget, its bit like ‘supermarket sweep’.

One of the highlights of the week is the tour of Belfast, where our students get the chance to meet young people from both the Falls Road (Catholic) and the Shankhill Road (Protestant). This gives them the opportunity to find out what the differences and the similarities are between problems back on the ‘Island’ (Isle of Dogs), to the problems here in

Northern Ireland

. The coach is then driven through the streets of Belfast, passing all the colourful Murals, stopping at the peace wall to write our messages of hope, then to the city hall, to meet the major of Belfast, where tea and biscuits are provided. From there, it’s off to the Stornmount, the official government building for dinner and a tour of the building including its debating chambers.

Students who are selected are either directly or indirectly involved in conflict, but are identified by a range of staff as having the capacity to change. These are pupils who have a lot of influence over the younger pupils in the school, they are described by Tim Brighouse as “opinion formers”. The theory is to change their views and to use them to pass on their experiences to younger pupils both at George Green’s and in the local primary feeder schools through various projects and activities.

This project is in its THIRD year, the conflicts cannot really be measured on paper, but visibly in terms of the amount of conflicts that have occurred since, the school environment is clearly a better and safer place to be. Now students have a better understanding of each other’s cultures. If conflicts do occur they are quickly resolved by our Young Adult Peers (Unity ‘Cru’ members), by stepping in, stopping the incident and informing a member of staff.

The Young Adult Peers are between the ages of 14-16. After returning from the trip, it doesn’t end there, pupils are then put into different groups for the ongoing projects, an hour a week after school. The reason for this is that if the work is not continued, then the progress that has been made in Belfast would count for very little because the pupils could slip back to where they started from.

With the experience the students receive before, during and after the trip, it gives them more opportunities to get involved in other projects such as:

Students organised a PowerPoint presentation. The group then visit various venues, such as youth centres, other schools, conferences, companies who fund us etc, to share their experiences of the trip, what they felt, what they learnt and how they have moved forward.

A group go to all the feeder schools as well as the lower school, as peer mentors, to run teambuilding and icebreaker workshops so the younger pupils start integrating with each other at an early age.

This group is involved in making a 15-minute advert on anti-racism; this is done by using footage taken from the camcorder and photographs of the trip. This is then shown hand in hand with the power point presentation.

This group is full of talented musicians; they input their own rap, song and mix the tracks for the compilation CD, the target is to promote unity, and send out the right message, they usually perform at school events.

This group is made up of sporty students; they are responsible for setting up a tournament for each year group. In order to play in this tournament, the team has to have someone represented from each ethnic group in their form class, making sure that girls, as well as boys are represented.

All Unity Cru members become Young Adult Peers (YAPs). As YAPs they are expected to identify and intervene in conflict in and around school. When the YAPs move into year 11 they have the opportunity to become Millennium Volunteers (MV’s). As MV’s they are expected to work not just in their schools but also in their local community, often in one of the many voluntary community organisations based on the Isle of Dogs or elsewhere in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.

We hope to continue the project and build on it year after year. There will be different residentials that will take place each year to give our young people the opportunities to develop their understanding of difference.

It is an ongoing programme and will target new students each year, identified individually for the programme as having the capacity to change their preconceptions.