Merry Christmas!
November 4, 2025
  Merry Christmas everyone! I just wanted to share a short message as we approach the Christmas break ahead of a more detailed newsletter for the new year which will round up the year so far and give a snippet of the exciting things happening in 2025. I have added a post I did recently on LinkedIn which refers to my second round on Radio 5 last weekend, in case anyone is interested.Every single one of you who stays on my mailing list is valued and I really appreciate your support and perseverance in the past 6 months. I have recently been quite busy and will be taking a step back this week to detox from work and the worlds of social media to spend time with family and recharge. Keep an eye out for the new year bulletin, where I will be sharing thoughts on recent news in the world of exclusion and details of upcoming podcasts and appearances of interest for Excluded from School. I wish I could have a Christmas drink with you all this year ( I am really into making eggnog!) and hear about your experiences and share my own, but I trust you will all have a lovely time and there will be plenty of time to connect in the new year. So, on behalf of Excluded from School, I would like to thank you all again for helping us on our quest of putting the naughty list in the bin! Merry Christmas and speak soon! Tier  I was recently invited back onto Radio 5 Live’s Stephen Nolan Show to discuss the government’s new Ten-Year Prison Strategy.It was depressing. This strategy promises to invest billions in building more prisons, streamlining planning permission to make sure they go up faster. last week, a Pupil Referral Unit (PRU) in London finally got planning permission for a gym. A gym that will keep young boys off the streets, learning boxing instead of picking up knives. They applied for that gym in 2017. Seven years to approve a place that helps prevent violence. But prisons? Fast-tracked with a sordid sort of glee. The press release included this sickening line: "To get shovels into the ground fast changes to planning rules will see prisons deemed as sites of national importance, reflecting their critical importance to public protection" We seem to prioritise places that hold people after they’ve harmed, instead of supporting places that prevent harm in the first place. Surely the latter are places of more national importance? On the radio, I was told that early intervention — the idea of stopping problems before they escalate — sounded like a “glossy brochure.” And yes, maybe it is a glossy brochure. But what’s wrong with that? Shouldn’t we want to invest in promises of hope? In pathways that keep our young people out of cells and into futures? I’ve traveled up and down the country, speaking at schools and BBC studios, and I often hear skepticism about early intervention. That it’s too idealistic, too costly. Dr. Gwen Adshead, in her brilliant Reith Lectures on violent offenders, put it perfectly: If schools don’t teach emotional education, what are they for? Schools are great at teaching fixed ideas of kindness and values. But life isn’t fixed. Life is complex. Sometimes, people we care about hurt us. Sometimes, a child’s behavior in class is disruptive — but is the child wrong, or is it just that what they’re doing is wrong? We react by labeling, excluding, punishing. We write them off. And when we write off children, society pays the price. The binary thinking Dr. Adshead describes is everywhere: offender vs. victim, disruptive child vs “30 others in the class.” It’s as if the past doesn’t matter, and by extension, neither does the future. Early intervention isn’t a fantasy. It happens in the everyday: In school behavior policies that focus on support, not just punishment. In the way we communicate with young people, understanding them rather than excluding them. In the spaces we create: gyms, safe hubs, and learning environments that engage, not isolate. Spaces of real national importance. We need the government to empower more stakeholders to deliver early intervention. But until then, let’s ask ourselves: What can we do to add a bit of gloss to the trajectory we’re on? Because right now, it’s far from glossy. Let’s choose prevention over reaction. Let’s choose to write young people back in, before they’re permanently written off. |
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