Good morning, friends and colleagues
I am rarely lost for words …. but I was truly moved as I listened to the fantastic performance from the students of Shireland CBSO Academy, accompanied by the professional musicians from the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. And I could tell from the attentive faces of colleagues that I was not alone.
Thank you for opening our conference in such an inspiring way. Your performance, delivered with such passion and talent - reflects the unique partnership between an internationally renowned orchestra and an ambitious academy trust, a powerful statement which sets the tone for our conference.
So please, let’s applaud again these wonderful musicians.
I am truly delighted to welcome you to our conference.
I want you to feel energised, valued and refreshed by taking these two days out from your busy schedules to attend.
Thank you, Leora, and your team for all the hard work that has gone into organising this event. We look forward to hearing from you shortly.
And so, our theme this year is Flourishing.
I wondered whether at this point to start drawing a mind map of word associations: What does flourishing mean to you?
Linguists among you would immediately recognise the Latin root – florere – meaning to bloom or to blossom.
Flourishing is associated with vigorous growth, success, fruitfulness, sturdy trees and fragrant flowers.
Flourishing is also organic – occurring after a period when plants may have been dormant, when they will have passed through seasons and stages to achieve maturity - and there will be uncertain times ahead when they will require nutrients to sustain them.
The verb ‘flourishing’ has transferred to other domains. Your own career may well be described as flourishing because you are active and successful. A signature written ‘with a flourish’ denotes confidence and determination.
And flourishing also has a meaning in contemporary positive psychology.
Flourishing moves beyond simple happiness or wellbeing; it encompasses a wide range of psychological constructs and gives us an holistic perspective on what it means to feel well and happy. According to the “founding father” of psychological flourishing, Dr. Martin Seligman, it is the result of paying careful attention to building and maintaining the five aspects of the PERMA model which he developed to explain what contributes to a sense of flourishing.
The five factors are:
- Positive emotions
- Engagement
- Relationships
- Meaning
- Accomplishments
The theory is that we flourish when we pay attention to each aspect: increasing our positive emotions, engaging with the world and our work, developing deep and meaningful relationships, finding meaning and purpose in all that we do, and achieving our goals through cultivating and applying our strengths and talents.
To flourish is to find fulfilment in our lives, accomplishing meaningful and worthwhile tasks, and connecting with others at a deeper level—in essence, living the “good life.”
Another positive psychologist and professor Dr. Lynn Soots describes flourishing as:
“the product of the pursuit and engagement of an authentic life that brings inner joy and happiness through meeting goals, being connected with life passions, and relishing in accomplishments through the peaks and valleys of life.”
So I want you to think about this state – joy, happiness and passion may not be the first emotions you experience on a Thursday morning – but you should at least be feeling positive and energised by your role as an educator and leader.
Because if you don’t feel really optimistic about the future, who will inspire and motivate our young people?
Let me paint a picture of a child growing up in modern day Britain.
A child born in innocence, unaware that many of the factors which may determine their outcomes are already set through a combination of genetics, postcode and economics.
A child who lives in a home where family income doesn’t stretch to the end of the week and where there is a continual struggle to meet everyone’s needs.
This picture in itself is nothing new: our literature is full of the ghosts of youngsters whose childhood was stolen by poverty, who descended into criminality to ward off starvation or fell victim to diseases which were curable for those with money.
Today, poverty is still about meeting basic needs – addressing the first rungs of Maslow’s hierarchy. But it has become more complex. So our children don’t actually starve, except in heartbreakingly extreme cases – but many suffer malnutrition associated with poor diet. Obesity is increasingly the province of the poor. Our children don’t actually live on the streets – but too many reside in substandard temporary accommodation.
And swathes of children’s lives are characterised by poverty of opportunity.
Let’s think some more about our child.
Their life isn’t ordered by alarm clocks and routines, so they are often late to school, and some days don’t turn up at all.
When they go to school, they find communication hard. School is a confusing place. They get angry with themselves and with everyone around them. They have learned fight or flight from a young age. They throw objects, cry, sometimes kick or bite.
They form relationships with difficulty, victims of the confused age in which we live.
At school, they are the bully’s target. Other children tell them that they are stupid or that no one wants to be their friend.
And sometimes the adults don’t hear these comments.
And so our child feels that they don’t belong.
And sometimes the adults begin to think of the child as the problem – and there are probably more children with significant needs in the class. And support services are so overstretched that getting through the day feels like climbing a mountain, like Sisyphus endlessly rolling the rock.
Like their peers, our child may be prone to anxiety – maybe of such intensity that they become a prisoner in their own mind, or they may be caught up in the net of a predator who sees and exploits their vulnerability.
Like their peers, as they grow older, our child will spend an increasing amount of time engaging with social media where they see images of a life they can’t afford, where they don’t recognise disinformation as being malicious, where they will read versions of conspiracy theories, presented as having scientific validity.
Their ambitions for the future may be thwarted by poverty, or they may not even get as far as harbouring ambitions because they don’t have the role models and mentors to encourage them.
They may look for solutions in the dark shadows of the web.
They may not be able to distinguish truth from fiction.
They may be easy prey for those with malevolent intentions.
Our child and others like them, don’t in the main, suffer the intense privations endured by Victorian mudlarks. Society has moved on because of the pioneering work of those who passionately wanted to make a difference.
But childhood remains perilous, and our children are the citizens – and potential leaders – of the future.
We all recognise these children, and we all want them – and our schools – to flourish. And it’s only natural to look to other organisations – CAMHS, children’s social care, Youth Justice – to provide at least some of the answers. But we have to accept that changing fortunes for the better is likely to reside first and foremost with us. The financial challenges experienced by the country are not going to disappear any time soon. We are seeing a dramatic rise in need correlating with a diminution of funds.
We are all anticipating the government’s White Paper – and I am delighted that the Secretary of State is finding time to address our conference later this morning. But we shouldn’t expect that this document will be a panacea. It won’t solve all our problems. It will be part of the solution and will require us all to step up to the harsh reality that childhood is massively difficult – the first years of this decade have been traumatising for so many young people.
The SEND system is unaffordable. The outcomes of too many children – particularly among those who are disadvantaged and white – are stubbornly low.
The first phase of the national independent Inquiry into White Working Class Educational Outcomes has been completed and polling data showing the attitudes of two thousand pupils aged 9-18 and two thousand parents of children in primary and secondary schools has been published.
The evidence shows starkly that white pupils from lower income households feel less engaged with school than their peers – and their attitudes mirror those of their parents who were disaffected by their own schooling and likely to feel disenchanted by their children’s schools too. We are faced with intergenerational discontent.
The data makes sobering – but perhaps unsurprising – reading.
Over a quarter of white working class pupils surveyed said that they rarely or never enjoyed lessons.
A similar proportion of boys in this group did not read any books, magazines or comics outside school– ever.
White children from lower income families had more negative views about schools’ behaviour management and academic support.
And the boys in this group were more likely than their peers to spend long hours gaming, while the girls spent more time on social media than their counterparts in other demographic groups.
And only a third of white parents in this economic group regarded achieving good grades as an important aspect of being successful.
It is tragic but unsurprising that at the end of Reception fewer than half of white working class children secure a good level of development, a chasm which deepens at GCSE when they are half as likely as the general school population to attain strong passes in English and maths.
As teachers, we believe in the value of education for its own sake as well as recognising its power to open doors.
As successful adults, we know the alignment between qualifications and earning potential – at least within the professions we have grown up valuing.
We cannot assume that our pupils, or their parents, share these views.
Don’t get me wrong – I am not suggesting for a minute that white working class pupils should be the sole focus of our work.
Far from it. Every child deserves our compassion, our commitment, our creative solutions.
But the white lower income children as a group seem the most resistant to the transformative work that we are trying to do within the sector, and for those with SEND disenchantment is compounded.
But struggle has defined lives throughout history – and trying circumstances have always spurred innovation. Geniuses have emerged when necessity has been the mother of invention.
So our ingenuity needs to focus on helping children who are the hardest to help, building the relationships which make them feel valued, actively listening to their views, and creating the experiences which might just transform their lives – opportunities such as those which have helped our Shireland musicians to blossom.
Our disadvantaged children need us most. We are the people who can help them muster their defences against forces who would harm them. We have to be their role models, counsellors and trusted adults. And we have to earn their respect by showing that we genuinely care and will do everything in our power to support them.
I’d like to finish with a section of a poem – Louis MacNeice’s Prayer Before Birth. It’s written from the point of view of an unborn child requesting protection from the modern world, and although it was first published in 1944, it speaks to our times and our sector.
I am not yet born, console me
I fear that the human race may with tall walls wall me,
With strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me,
On black racks rack me, in blood baths roll me.
I am not yet born; provide me
With water to dandle me, grass to grow for me, trees to talk
To me, sky to sing to me, birds and a white light
In the back of my mind to guide me.
We have a duty to protect and nurture our children. We have to provide the white light of guidance. And in difficult times we must find a way of making it speak to the next generation.
So my message today is a plea to us all to shine this light brightly, to provide hope in the darkness, to create possibilities that will enable our most disadvantaged and vulnerable pupils and communities to grow strong and flourish.
Thank you for listening.
