A dark and difficult week

7th February 2025

It’s been a very difficult week for all work in education and for the wider country; be that parents, carers, children or young people. The horrendous events, with the very tragic consequences, at All Saints Catholic High School, Sheffield, has been a real shock to our system. Many of you will have connections with the school; be that through staff, the children or the wider community. We feel the pain that they all will be suffering. And our thoughts will be with the family and friends of Harvey Willgoose and the staff at the school.

When tragic events happen, the media can go into some sort of frenzy and will find ‘commentators’ who rush to judgement about the events and how ‘we must never allow this to happen again’. Clearly, we do wish to work to ensure nothing like this can happen in any school, in any community, ever again. And you can be reassured that the schools and the college, in this trust, have taken site, pupils, students and staff security very seriously for many years. All in school or college know the institutional lockdown procedures. You can be reassured that we’ve invested in IT systems and products to aid communication and that we have invested incredible amounts of money in site management and security. You can be reassured that we have invested in an external company (Anchored Schools) to review our safeguarding procedures, which includes site safety, and we take all of their recommendations seriously.  We do not and will not ignore the possibility of the ‘what if’. Schools, colleges, must be places of learning, in a safe and secure environment.

In all the terror of the week it did take me a time to reflect and remember that, despite the very tragic events of this week, schools and colleges are incredibly safe places. The reality: there are currently 32,149 schools in the UK; of these, 3,062 are nurseries or early-learning centres, 20,739 are primary schools, 29 are middle schools and 4,181 are secondary schools; there are 2,461 independent schools, 1,546 special schools, 57 non-maintained special schools and 348 pupil referral units (PRUs). There are currently 10,633,485 full and part-time pupils/students at school in the UK. We aren’t complacent but we need that sense of perspective.

And we would want to remember and remind ourselves that schools, colleges, educational institutions should be warm and welcoming places. Children and young people should want to come into the building, be free to move around, make friends, and grow up in an environment which is calm and safe, yet warm and inviting.

It seems that we do have something of an issue with knife crime in the UK. But we must remember that this is a societal and community issue not another thing that schools and colleges ‘must fix’. We need all partners, we need all parents and carers, we need all services, we need all commentators and politicians to stand together, be intelligent in their/our approach, be mindful of what reasonable actions we can take as a society, as communities, and in that purposeful and thoughtful atmosphere we can reflect upon what we do in school, in college, each and every day.

‘Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that’. Martin Luther King, Jr.

 ‘Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness’. Desmond Tutu

It has been a dark week, we won’t and don’t forget that, but we remain positive about the role our schools and colleges play in promoting safety, social and community cohesion and a sense of belonging.