Steele in Cornish School Buckles Under Parental Pressure, Mercifully

nick cowen, 28 October 2008

This coming Sunday sees the start in the Cornish town of St Just of a two-day festival that takes place there each year to celebrate its fourteenth century church. As well as that church and an obligatory public house that stands next door to it, the town also boasts a small secondary school catering for several hundred local children who traditionally have been given the Monday off to join in the festivities.
When she joined it from London earlier this year, the school’s new head Jackie Steele decided that henceforth it would remain open on these Mondays.

She reportedly took the decision without consulting the local vicar or the town council which pleased neither. Nor was her decision to the liking of the townsfolk whose complaints have led to Ms Steele relenting and sending parents a letter of apology in which she informed them that they could withdraw their children from school on that day.
Ms Steele’s climb-down, however, was only half-hearted, since she is not closing the school altogether and her letter leaves it unmistakably clear that she would prefer them to leave their children in school that day. She wrote:
‘I am writing to apologise that our focus on teaching and learning at Cape Cornwall School… has allowed us to have overlooked the importance of Feast Day to the local community… If you decide that you wish your child to continue their learning in school on Feast Day, they will be able to take part in our Feast Day assembly and free lunch.’
The preference of the head for pupils to spend the second day of the local festival in school was further indicated by what an unnamed spokesman for it reportedly said earlier in defence of the decision to keep it open on that day:
‘It was felt over the last few years Feast is not being celebrated as much as it once was and it was decided it was probably best to keep the children at school and celebrate Feast in our own way.’
One appreciates the school’s concern to maximise the academic performance of its pupils. But there are many bizarre aspects of the original decision to keep it open that day and of the head’s half-hearted capitulation to local sentiment to allow pupils join their families in the local festivities.
First, in its report on the school in 2005, one of the comparatively few things about the school which Ofsted singled out for praise was its ‘close involvement in local festivals’. Why on earth, then, should its new head have thought it was educationally warranted to abandon the tradition of shutting the school on the second day of the festival?
Second, since October 2007 all maintained schools have been under a statutory duty to promote community cohesion. How on earth can keeping the school open that day be interpreted as being anything other than a derogation of its statutory duty?
Third, the school is a ‘specialist arts college’ whose website states that part of its mission is to be ‘an awe-inspiring learning centre … with all activities and experiences in the school founded on learning and personal growth… Together, we will succeed in this … by strong partnerships with local … communities…’ Surely, if the school genuinely felt that the festival had fallen into desetude in recent years, then the appropriate way in which it could and should have fulfilled its statutory duty to promote community cohesion was not by separating its pupils from their families that day, but by contributing to the festival in ways that could draw on its strengths and aspirations as a putative ‘arts college’?
It is quite possible that the head just did not like the idea of her pupils participating in the local hunt which has always formed part of the festivities of that day. For, as was pointed out by many locals who complained about her original decision to keep the school open that day, it could have been made one of the school’s obligatory staff training days when it needs to close to enable staff to undergo in-service training.
Had the day of the festival been used in that way, its staff could have considered how best in future the work of the school could be harnessed to strengthening, not undermining, local tradition and community, thereby fulfilling its statutory duty to promote community cohesion.