Bedrock Talks from Bedrock Learning

41. Removing barriers, changing lives with Krystian Liptrot (CEO of Life Changing Education)

• Bedrock Learning • Season 2 • Episode 34

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The education system is at breaking point. With unprecedented exclusion rates and 44,000 teachers leaving the profession last year alone, something has to change. Enter Krystian Liptrot, CEO of Life Changing Education (LCE), who's pioneering an approach so revolutionary it deserves your full attention.

When host, Andy, visited LCE's facilities in North Manchester, he was struck by something remarkable: dozens of previously disengaged students looking him in the eye, confidently saying, "Good morning." These weren't just any students, but those on the brink of permanent exclusion or who hadn't attended school for months. And yet, the atmosphere was electric with possibility.

Krystian's vision stems from personal experience and a deep reflection on our educational landscape. "We've got to change what education is," he explains, describing a three-stage model that starts with demonstrating effective pupil-facing education, moves to supporting mainstream schools through free consultancy and mental health resources, and ultimately aims to disrupt the entire sector.

What separates LCE from traditional alternative provision is their commitment to personalisation over mere differentiation. Their network includes dedicated facilities for various passions - a professional recording studio, a fully-functioning salon, multiple gyms, and an art gallery - each designed to show students they can excel. This isn't about criticising schools; it's about recognising that while current systems may work for many, they can fail others catastrophically.

The results speak volumes: over 1,000 qualifications achieved by students previously labeled "disruptive"; dramatic reductions in permanent exclusions across partner schools; and young people requesting to attend even on inset days. All built on what Krystian calls 'the kindness principle' - no raised voices, just compassion and clear expectations.

Want to witness how education can truly transform lives when reimagined from first principles? Follow Krystian's work - you'll never look at our education system the same way again.

Krystian Liptrot is the CEO of Life Changing Education, an innovative educational inclusion service that partners with mainstream schools to re-engage disaffected young learners. Under his leadership, LCE offers short-term, part-time placements that help pupils rebuild a positive relationship with education. Krystian’s work focuses not only on supporting students to overcome barriers to learning but also on strengthening the inclusion capacity of schools and local authorities across the region. His mission is clear: to create aspirational, inclusive environments where every young person has the chance to succeed.

Speaker 1:

Hi everyone, thank you for continuing to download, stream and subscribe to the Bedrock Talks podcast. My name is Andy Sammons. As ever, I'm the stream and subscribe to the Bedrock Talks podcast. My name is Andy Sammons. As ever, I'm the teaching and learning lead for Bedrock Learning and it's my privilege to host this show. It's amazing. Every week I get on the Monday, I get a list and an email of all the downloads and streams we've had, and it's just amazing. It's lovely that we're doing something that so many people are interested in and listening to.

Speaker 1:

In today's pod, we've got someone who we work with at Bedrock, actually who's just come into the Bedrock partnership fold, and I visited this colleague a few months ago and was just absolutely blown away by everything they're doing. You need to follow and to keep an eye on what's going on here. This is incredible stuff. So we've got Christian Liptrot, who's the CEO of Life Changing Education, an educational inclusion service based in North Manchester. Now, the title and the information I've just given you covers about 0.1% of what's really going on here. It's just phenomenal, and Christian is incredibly, incredibly busy, so for him to give up his time to do this this morning is massive, but I think it's something people need to hear.

Speaker 2:

So, first of all, christian morning and thank you for coming on morning and, honestly, it's a pleasure and I know you say I'm busy but it's a privilege and I'm quite humbled to be given this opportunity because, likewise, you know, when we met I felt like we were very aligned and, you know, passion to support the next generation, and that's what it all comes down to really well, and that's where I want to start.

Speaker 1:

Um, people need to hear the story of where lce came from and I don't want to embarrass christian here, but you often see christian trip shot, lip chart, ceo, lce. I don't think it's a stretch to sort of have something MBE CB, I don't say that lightly. I don't say that lightly. I think what's going on here and what you'll hear about in the next half an hour or so is going to be so and should be so disruptive for our education system that everyone needs to follow what's going on here. So the first question, the burning question I have, that I need you to answer for everyone who's listening, is where did lce come from?

Speaker 2:

um, it's a really difficult one to answer in in simplicity really, because it came from so many different avenues.

Speaker 2:

I mean, you know, I myself I'm I grew up, born and bred in North Manchester, in Rochdale went through the school education system as a pupil and I reflect a lot and I realise that I'm really fortunate, to be honest, because my skill set and my strengths are celebrated in our education system. So I went through school and I was relatively academic, so I was in higher set for the different subjects. From a sports perspective, I wasn't too bad at sport, so that helps you fit in and make friendships and socially, you know, makes you accepted, I suppose a bit quicker sometimes. But I was always really empathetic to, to others that I saw had incredible skills but weren't celebrated in school. Um, so that was, that was just me. As a young person. You, I draw inspiration from my granddad, certainly my parents. My dad was always involved in my education, not necessarily as a teacher but in a governance capacity as chair, both primary and secondary. So that influenced me as a youngster, then left school, went into professional football, didn't quite make it and I suppose that resonated. I feel this rejection. Now I've put myself out there and't quite make it, and I suppose that resonated. I was like, well, I feel this rejection now I've put myself out there and not quite made it. And I've seen children that have worked solidly on a 12-year educational journey from age four to 16, something they have to do to get to 16, to be told, well, you've not quite made that grade and you're not getting on that level two, level three, college course, you've got to go back. You know you've got to go back. You know I saw it happen. Um, and it really made it difficult. Just bear with me one second. Sorry your uncle. Okay, just need to take it out of there. Thank you, I'll bring you a call back in a minute. Thanks, cool, sorry, and don't worry. To be honest, I mean, that is lc, though I like that. I'm having a meeting and the pupils feel confident and safe enough to come in and and have a conversation and and that's what we've created. So, yeah, so I'll go back to the journey was like.

Speaker 2:

So it started in school and I went and I got that first rejection really, where you put yourself out there, you don't quite make it. Then I went, returned to education and, you know, on the back of applying for the police, being unsuccessful, applying for the fire service and not hearing back and you know, really was a catch. And then I got a job in football coaching, loved it, loved seeing people develop. I didn't get enough passion from seeing people get better at football, but I loved seeing the passion of seeing people grow in confidence and develop as a person. That made me realise actually I'm excited by a career in education. So I went and did my qualification and I worked in a place called Brown Hill Learning Community, which is the PRSN special school for the Rochdale Borough. I was there for a number of years. I was secured head of maths, assistant and deputy head and then from there I left and took a headship moving into the independent sector.

Speaker 2:

It. And then from there I left and took a headship moving into the independent sector. It was there that again, professionally and as a person, it allowed me an opportunity to reflect, and what I won't do is speak negatively about particular places because there's incredible people in the independent sector. My problem was, I feel like, however much we can support a child academically in smaller settings, socially, we're making it very difficult for them then to be successful in the post-16 world because they're in very small settings, very small groups. And then my other frustration was I see incredible young people losing all of the confidence in education because they're not quite meeting their academic targets. I see teachers that are losing their way because they went into education hoping to make a difference.

Speaker 2:

But actually it's that prescriptive in education. Now, you know, years and years ago and and I'll probably go on going off on a tangent there to answer your question but years and years ago, um, teachers were able to express themselves in the classroom. But now, more and more, you go around and you see, you know prescriptive subjects being taught, in particular sequences, with every member of staff has to deliver a lesson from the same PowerPoint, and that's fine for probably a majority of pupils, probably. But it is fine, it's not outstanding at times. And then what happens is we have an education system that makes every teacher nervous when ofsted call. And we can, we can talk about ofsted and we can say, oh well, they're changing the ways and not giving the one.

Speaker 2:

But but actually in any other industry, if you want to look at quality assurance and improvement, what? What would be great is if they came, they spent time with us, not two days, not a quick whistle, you know, spend some time with us, get to know us inside out, and at the end of that have a confidential discussion with the team and say, look, what I've seen in my time with you is this, this, this are brilliant, but actually we can make these things even better if, but if all that's done confidentially, then that's amazing. But what happens instead is we have a report and we can all read between the lines as to what the report is trying to say, with or without a, you know, one word judgment at the end of it. And then what happens is, when you've got a disaffected parent that's feeling frustrated by a school, they then use that report so to hold school accountable, but not in a way that you and I might, in a way that can be done quite confrontational, um, and that that then breaks a barrier. And one of the biggest relationships you can have to support children is the relationship between school and parent or home life. It has to be, and if we, if we miss that, that really quite clear but huge, you know, massively impactful opportunity, then we're already on a negative foot because the pupils think, you know, sometimes they'll go to one person or the other to get the outcome they want, and that that so lce for well. Actually, let's reflect on how pupils are supported and how schools are supported and you'll see it.

Speaker 2:

All over the country you'll see what we call alternative provision. You know, we'll see it and I'm not going to name any for being good, bad or indifferent. There's some outstanding places. There really is. There's some places that you know the priorities are in the wrong area, maybe not necessarily focused on the development of a person, but actually focused on business prowess and profit margins, and actually, in my opinion, a lot of places are overpriced for what they're providing. We've got to go back to the start. So an alternative provider is great for a pupil-facing perspective. That's really really helpful.

Speaker 2:

But actually the whole educational system needs support. Right now it's creaking at the seams. 44,000 people left the profession again last year and statistically I'm one of them. You know I resigned from inet. I'm sitting next to my wife at home, so I'm resigning with a media effect, with no job to go to, because I believe we've got to do something different. We've got to change what education is. You know we're looking at education systems across europe, across the world. They're all different, but there's things we can learn for, you know, even if it's not look at industry, there's things we can learn and implement for our pupils and our teachers and our.

Speaker 2:

Our biggest resource, our most important resource, is the people that are educating our, our future. And if we're losing our best people, if we're not just losing them officially out of the profession, we're just losing them in regards morale and commitment and feeling valued and passionate about what they're, then we're failing our children. So when I looked at LCA, I thought, well, what do we need to focus on? We need to focus on how do we support pupils? So there's a kind of a three-stage program to this. So you know, we're doing really well.

Speaker 2:

We've kind of gone through stage one and that will always remain our foundation, which is demonstrate that our approach to people facing education can be impactful, and we're doing that. We know we're doing that. You know we're seeing pupils who weren't attending school come and feel safe and start attending regularly, attending on days when their school are on inset, because they're asking if they can. You know, we're seeing that. So we know and that happens through kindness, through compassion, through empathy, through a policy that we have that no adult should ever raise our voice to a child and we'll probably end up talking about that later on as well. Then we move to stage two, which is educate the educators and that's not said to patronize, and we've got fantastic teachers out there, but we've got to educate the education system which allows people to go back to doing what they want to do in the first place. We need scientists to make that science lesson exciting, not to teach up a powerpoint. We need PE teachers to be inspirational role models for kids, to be aspiring athletes. Get them out of bed and off the games and out doing you know. We need that to happen again and at the minute I feel like we've lost our way. So stage two is educate the educators and show schools that we can get better outcomes if the kids benefit from the very, very best version of the adults that are in their building. Educating the kids.

Speaker 2:

And then long-term stage three is exactly what you touched on right at the beginning of the introduction, which is we have to. We have to get to a place where we can disrupt the whole sector and go back to basics, go back to square one and say we're delivering a curriculum that has had minimal change for years and years and years, decades we are. We all know that we're delivering a curriculum that's not adapted with, certainly at the speed of the trajectory that community and society has developed. So that's where stage three comes. But that can only happen when stage one is continuing to be embedded, you know, throughout, and stage two means that our local data on attendance, on progress academically, but also emotional, social progress and relationships, you know we want to restore positive relationships. Education, again, that's generational. We've got to restore positive relationship with the parents, never mind the pupils, because a lot of these parents have gone through a system that they felt failed by.

Speaker 2:

So, yeah, lc became because I, I became disillusioned with education and what it meant. And you know, and I've never worked as hard as I as I work now, you know, I never switch off, I don't feel like I work because I'm doing something I'm so passionate about that is making a genuine difference every single day. And I'm surrounded by a team of people and not just LCA, the schools that were lucky enough to work with Bedrock, that were lucky enough to work with what I've found. I think when you're stuck in a system that you're feeling a bit disillusioned by, you start struggling to see your people and you see people leaving the profession and you see people coming in going only 30 more get-ups until after the first day. But you hear it, and understandably you hear it, because they've not got that right support there.

Speaker 2:

But by doing this and meeting people in every single school that are so just, you know, match my passion. You know, just like yourself, I'm not, I'm not an anomaly anymore. I'm now meeting the people and together I think that we can change the lives of these peoples, and that's what life-changing education needs to be. It's a full combined team effort and that includes external agencies and everywhere. You know everything you look at.

Speaker 1:

So I think we're going to touch on the model in just a moment in what what it looks like on on the ground, but I can speak to a lot of what you've just said. There I visited and remember now in my mind, famously said, where are we? And I remember you said rochdale. You know and I remember being in there, you know in it where, you know the, the place where you know the soccer factory. Is it a soccer factory?

Speaker 1:

yeah yeah, where it's based in at the moment, and just thinking, trying to square it in my mind what does what does this look like on the daily? What's going on here? And then the next time I visited, I was lucky enough to meet the staff and give them an overview of bedrock and and so on and so forth. And I walked in that morning, um, having just braved the traffic etc, etc. And um, there was probably 40, 50 pupils there, I guess, in that cafe area and they all looked me in the eye, said good morning, the. The atmosphere was just, it was, it was electrifying, it was amazing.

Speaker 1:

And these aren't pupils who are necessarily going to love being in anywhere other than their own bed, probably necessarily at that point in the day, and none of them will have had the smoothest journey with education.

Speaker 1:

But something has happened in that area, in that room, where actually everyone feels safe, feels safe, secure, able to kind of give of themselves to me when they say good morning. So I can speak to a lot of what you're saying here and as a parent I can speak to it, you know, with my son's struggles with his learning over the last couple of years as a teacher, I can speak to it in terms of the fact that, as you say, it's not just about um retaining, but it's about retaining them and helping them feel safe, secure and energized in the profession. So what I'm saying in a very roundabout way is that you're doing this daily. That stage one is happening daily. I've seen it, I've felt it myself. So that does bring me onto the question what is the model? You know there'll be people listening and thinking all right, this all sounds great, but what does the model look like? How does it work?

Speaker 2:

Well, I can't take full credit for it. You know, it starts off with the fact that I had a vision in my head when I resigned, and whatever that vision was, and I can talk about that. We've surpassed it so far, beyond what I ever thought was possible, certainly within this time scale, because the people have dared to come on this journey with me, to step away from their security and be part of this. I've made it better than I ever thought it could have been, so that's part of it. Um, but the model, essentially, I read. I read a book, uh, called uh, the kindness principle, which really resonated with me, and I'll tell everybody about it and I do a lot of reading, but that one really stood out and it wasn't because it told me anything new, just reminded me of why I do and I wasn't on my own, and I think it's such a beautiful way of talking about behavior management the kindness principle. You get a parent and people come in and speak to you and say you know you want to talk about your behavior policy and actually, instead of saying, well, you will stick to our behavior policy, or else actually we apply all our policies around the kindness principle. It sounds much more safe, doesn't it? And welcoming. So that that was.

Speaker 2:

But then I looked at the model of how do we make lc um become what I want it to become? So to start off with, again, let's go back to the first stage of pupil facing perspective. I needed a facility that felt different to a classroom, but, you know, different to a school, but gave everything that a school could. So soccer factor is brilliant. Then it goes along and you suddenly get this association by local schools that think your boys are on there and your football provision. Come to be honest, you're not academic. Actually, we've surpassed 1,000 qualifications this year with these pupils that are on the cusp of permanent exclusion, or EBSA pupils who have not been in school for a long time, on the verge of being elected.

Speaker 2:

You know that these are the pupils that are coming to us and I and I really what was really nice was on the day that you visited and again I'm probably going off on a tangent, I'll come back to the model on the day you visited. I think this. So I met you the first time. The second time you came, when the pupils were present, the staff were present. It's really nice because I couldn't be here when you arrived I arrived a bit later than you you'll never get a show.

Speaker 2:

What you'll get is a group of people adults that care so passionately about supporting these children that they come to work every day with great energy, with a welcoming, warming smile, and as a result of, you get a group of kids that come in and shake everybody's hand with a smile, share a nice comment or a joke of some sort, and they feel safe, they don't feel pressured and nervous, and you know that's a big part of it, and I'm really pleased that that happened, because you know schools that we work with really closely will ring and say can we book a meeting? And I say you can do. That happened because you know schools that we work with really closely will ring and say can we book a meeting? And then I say you can do, but please don't think you have to go. Go book a week I mean in three weeks on thursday, just say I'll be there in half an hour, is that okay? Of course you can. They're your pupils and and actually we need to work collaboratively.

Speaker 2:

So that takes us straight back to the model. The model was just that. You know we said we don't work with with crews. Now, that was a really big decision for me to make because I loved my time working at the crew, but I felt there's two, two reasons I needed to do that. One was I needed the pupils to think well, actually, if I want to, if I really enjoy attending lc and I want to return my place there, then I need to make better choices when I'm in school, so that they're making better choices in their mainstream school means they're able to achieve more, but it also means there's less disruption to the learning of the other people who were previously disrupting. But then, from a approved perspective, hopefully, it stems the flow of permanent exclusions, which means the proof we feel that we're actually supporting our crews more than we would be if we were taking their pupils on a on a referral basis, because actually we're reducing the permex numbers.

Speaker 2:

Um, and you know we could talk about individual schools on that, but we are. You know we're helping to. We're helping schools avoid permanent exclusion. You know, one of the schools we're working with they've gone from nine permexes two years ago, five last year when they just started working with us, zero this year when they've really bought into what we're doing. You know that that's incorrect. But that means that that's nine less permanent exclusions that go to the pro, which means the staff that are in the pro can do what the pro is supposed to do, which is, you know, a turnaround to reintegrate these people's back to mainstream. But if suddenly they've got, you know, I think we're in a. We're in a pandemic nationally. Look at the permanent and fixed exclusion data. It's higher it's ever been and it's not got any sign of slowing down.

Speaker 1:

That's a national problem. Where do you come into the equation then? If a pupil is struggling at school, and at what point do they come to you compared to a pre? What are you compared to a pre then?

Speaker 2:

I mean, we're a service, like I say. So we offer so many different opportunities now for the schools that work with us. So option one is they've got a child that's demonstrating behaviours that are very, very close to a permex, or a child that they just can't get in because of anxiety, you know, for whatever reason they just can't get into school. So they quite often get referred to us and they come to us and we support them and develop their relationship with education, build the confidence and take them back into school with a really robust and clear reintegration plan. Everyone is personalised. You know, there's a buzzword in education that says differentiation. It's not enough, is it? It should be personalisation. I think if we just differentiate and I don't think that's good enough I think we have to personalise every experience for all of us, because you and I have got a lot of things that we're aligned on, but we've also got a lot of differences that I'm sure that we have. That doesn't mean that we're not aligned in our, our purpose. But yeah, what skills and strengths? And? And so actually, if we, if we took the same role at the same company, working side by side, there's no way we should have exactly the same sask list. You should be giving the things that you excel and I should give them, and then that's. Then we've got a high performance team, aren't we so? So the personalized approach has to come into it with the pupils. But then, beyond that, you know, we know that for a leadership people 44 000 left the profession. So we've struck up a partnership with rugby league cares, which we're really proud of. Now rugby league cares are a huge charity that support mental health and well-being, you know, and there's lots of work coming out of the country, all different industries. Schools don't necessarily have that budget to prioritise that, so we've paid for that. We're giving that for free, you know. We're giving access to them, sessions for no cost to all the schools we work with. Then we're offering free education consultancy, because again, I'll talk about the wider team after because every single person is equally, you know, valuable to the team. But within our team now we've got two former head teachers, we've got former chair of governors, we've got three former deputy teachers, two former assistant teachers, former senko, former curriculum leader, maths, english, performing arts, pe. You know. You know. So we offering free, no cost education consultancy. So if you want our support in your school without having to send the pupils, then let us come and give a fresh pair of eyes. We'll never be negative, we'll never be critical, but we'll always offer developmental ideas and support. So we offer consultancy. We've got a full CPD programme which hopefully the next academic year you can be delivering on, you know.

Speaker 2:

Know, we're trying to support the schools, the staff the most important resource, of course, I said before the staff and the pupils at the same time and that's where we come in to to really try and reduce permanent exclusions, improve attendance for those children that feel really kind of out of the depth attending school to start with, you know, and that might mean that we release as they come here.

Speaker 2:

What we know is, within our team, every child will find a member of staff on this team that they can resonate and feel comfortable with. They might meet someone who they feel I hope I'm like them when I'm older they might feel someone that reminds them of a certain figure, but they will find somebody. Because it's such a diverse team, they'll find somebody. Because it's such a diverse team, they'll find somebody and if we need to to start with to get them into that school, that key person will be released from lc to go into school for a day, for a week, for however long it needs to happen to support that child back into mainstream, because our success isn't a child coming to us for a long, long period of time. Our success is when we see them flying in school. But actually we see the appropriate adaptations have been put in place to allow them to fly in school as well.

Speaker 1:

That's where our success comes.

Speaker 1:

When I was last there so when we're talking about personalization, we obviously drove around and we looked at all the different things. I was just flabbergasted by what you have. I mean, you literally got a boxing ring, literally got a gym, got a salon, got a recording studio, things that young people coming to you is genuinely going to float their boat, those things. That doesn't mean to say they, just they do whatever they want all day, every day, but those things are there as very real, tangible, positive, reinforcing factors to their day, to help them feel safer, like they can succeed. Give us a sense. Obviously pupils are, um, you know, schools lean on you and, uh, use you guys as a way of avoiding perm exes, right, that's, that's what you do, brilliantly. But where does all of that stuff fit in in terms of the, the gyms and and this, what, what does give us a flavor of kind of what that all looks?

Speaker 2:

like. So that's there again. You've seen the size of our main site, soccer factory. It's huge, we know is, and everything that we've got are different sites. We know we could fit here, but actually what our kids need are that feeling of safety and security to start with. So we have different sites so that the right number of pupils can be at the right settings with the right dynamic of pupils, because to start with most of these pupils they're masking their anxieties for education and that can present as, like I say, avoid an education volatile behaviors. You know miscommunications, so we know. So we need safe spaces for these pupils.

Speaker 2:

The other thing is these pupils deserve an opportunity to see that they are outstanding in their own area and, yeah, they might struggle academically in certain subjects, but but when they find their passion and their interest. So they need access to the best resources for that. And again, go back to typical models are very, very small settings with limited resources. You know when you look at other APs there'll be limited resources, small settings, or they have outreach which pick them up and I get the purpose for them. I get it. I'm not diminishing it, the outreach, it makes sense. They need that support. They know that one-to-one interaction. They need to go and get out of the house. That's fine, but what we need to do is show these pupils that they can achieve academically and everywhere they go. We know that has to be purposeful and personalized exactly what he said.

Speaker 2:

So we you know you're right, we've got the soccer factory which, if you're, if you want to be in a, if you're an aspirant footballer, you're going to come here and go. Wow, I get the chance to come every day, but they're not aspirant footballers. You know you want to work in hair and beauty. They need to go to a genuine salon. There was a shop front facing salon that's been working as a fully functioning salon and so we took it on. They need to be in there and they need to build the skill set to be confident. And then we need to invite local elder residents and then give some free treatments to build that relationship between elder, and that's another part of it.

Speaker 2:

Then we go to music and actually music and and school now is fantastic musicians teaching the curriculum, but probably can't teach what they want to teach because they've not got the resources. So brilliant. Let's go and get a full recording studio, rehearsal spaces, you know a mixing. Let's teach them how to. Let's teach them you know sound engineering and how to produce and mix, because, let's be honest, there's there's legitimate, genuine career opportunities in these areas. Then we've got the art studio you know david, who works with us, who were brought from north chad, who's phenomenal person, you know former head of art, and we said this is your space, make it into a gallery. And these kids we've got kids going in there.

Speaker 1:

That yeah, I've seen it.

Speaker 2:

They love creative, they love art, but behaviourally they've been told they're not allowed in art anymore in school. But what we've got is opportunity for them to get back in there, show them they can, and now they're going going. I want to be back in art. You know, jim? Yeah, you only saw one of them. We've got two. We've got one and the one you saw and another one that's similar, about 15 minutes away again.

Speaker 2:

Why do we have two? Because, yeah, it's extra finances for us, but actually because to start with 12, 15 kids in that same area might be too much for these people. So when they get, when they're getting reintegration ready, yeah, they need to be in a group of 12 to 15, maybe 20. But just that. We need the opportunity to split them up and you might need a girls-only session, so we need that opportunity as well, and they might feel more comfortable doing circuit training without. You know, there's all kinds of things that come into it. What I needed to happen was I needed to make sure that, whatever your aspiration was, if you came to LSE, you had opportunity to have access to the very best resources in that area.

Speaker 1:

And what's interesting, I've heard the word opportunity mentioned there a few times. What's so interesting is that let's be real about this. If schools have excluded or prevented some of their pupils from accessing art, it might be, it will be for a reason that's perfectly legitimate in terms of, you know, endangering other pupils or I don't know. You know unacceptable behaviour on other people, whatever it is, you know, because schools are communities and we have to accept that. We can't say, well, there should be no punishment anywhere. We're not. That's not what you're saying. What you're looking at is proactively looking to provide young people with those opportunities so that they can themselves get back into that positive feedback loop. That's what this is. It's not, as you've said a number of times, it's not about criticizing schools, criticizing individuals in those schools. It's about genuinely providing everyone with that opportunity to feel like they've got some light at the end of the tunnel that they're aiming for, right, that's it's so critical and that's what these very real, tangible spaces are doing do you know what schools have done?

Speaker 2:

nothing wrong. I have to make that really clear. You know the mainstream schools haven't done anything wrong at all. What they've done is they've prioritised, making sure the majority of pupils have the right place to learn. But what's happening in education? You know, I believe wholeheartedly that social and communication skills are the most powerful and important skill that we can teach people, and I know my strengths and I'm really proud of that, you know. You know I'm a man now, but as I've got older, I've grown in confidence and I've gone. I know where I'm really strong now. I'm a former head of maths. Well, there's far, far better mathematicians in education than I am, but what I am good at is I'm good at developing the skills for people to feel safe and secure, to, you know, to to express themselves both in pupils and as adults.

Speaker 2:

But so when I use that, I'm going to use an analogy to you that I talk to every child about, when, when they first come to LSE, because look, I might get into it for naming a shop here. But, um, yeah, I always say to the people you go to JD Sports, and I say that because a lot of these people like the clothes that that particular shop sells. So you go there, you buy an item, you get home and you don't like that item. If you go back and you say excuse me, I'm really sorry to bother you, but I bought this and it don't fit quite right, or there's a pull in it or there's something wrong with the item. I've got my receipt. The 99.9% of the time, we're going to get exactly what we want the outcome to be, which is either a stock credit, refund, exchange, whatever it is. We're going to get that. If we go and lose our temper and jump over the till and grip them by the throat, we're not just not getting our IAM exchange, you're also getting arrested. I've explained that to you and I can tell that you're already going. Yeah, the kids can relate to it as well. That's my strength.

Speaker 2:

But we need to do that with kids, not me, not you, not LCE. That needs to be part of it. How to ask for support in the right way needs to be taught to the children from four years old. What happened? You know that. Let's use our example as, again, as you know, what typically happens with our pupils is they've not got that social infrastructure, so what they do is they feel really overwhelmed. They get more and more. They either put their head on the desk and they avoid learning for, you know, for the entirety of the lesson, or they do something that they know is going to get them exited from that classroom. So then what happens is they get them off-site direction. We're calling now.

Speaker 2:

It was a managed move Last five years in Greater Manchester. We're on a 97% failure record of managed moves. Of course we are because we're sending these kids that are masking anxiety to another school of equal size, with even less relationships, with an even bigger bus ride and expecting them to cope socially. But actually all they're going to do is, within the first week or two, they're going to do something big to get them out of that situation. So there's two benefits.

Speaker 2:

One is they're trying to get that social acceptance from the peers because they're nervous going into the thing. I need to see something that people are going to accept before. But the other one, the main reason, is I need to get out of this situation. That's making me feel really, really uncomfortable and out my depth. They've all got the. You know I I'll say at home now and I'm not really good at doing it, feeling a bit overstimulated, but I can just need 10 minutes. That's how I, that's how I communicate it to my wife and vice versa, you know, and we'll talk to our kids who are five and seven and say I can see you getting overwhelmed.

Speaker 1:

You know we have that conversation I knew that because I took my little boy to football yesterday and we often have that window of time to chat and he said I feel like you're always telling me off at the minute. I feel like you're always. I got strawberries out the fridge and I got told off for that no-transcript. This afternoon we pulled over and we went to Starbucks and we had. I got him a frappuccino, um, I had a flat white and we sat down and we talked for an hour about all the things that he's struggling with at the minute.

Speaker 1:

And he says he wants a PS five in his room to be able to play all that because he can't play. He doesn't want to use the family telly all the time, he wants a phone because some of his mates have got phones and all this, all these things in year four and and he's and there was a mixture of things around. I'm not good enough because I I don't fit in with my friends. It was a mixture of things around. You don't trust me not to have a phone. It was a. It was a mixture of things around.

Speaker 1:

I can't have what I want. You know when I've wanted this for ages, and each bit we took it bit by bit and I just said I'm not gonna click my fingers and make it all happen now, but I've heard you and we're gonna. We can work towards these things and I think it's. You know, if you extrapolate that out in 10 years time or whatever it is, of course they're going to be behaving in these ways to get their needs, and if they feel like they're never going to get their needs met anyway, they might as well do something extreme because they've nothing to lose.

Speaker 2:

But you know as well you've got. There's another side of it. So that's absolutely perfect what you've just said and it's so nice to hear, and again there's there'll be hundreds and thousands of parents, you know, replicate what we're doing. That's, that's brilliant. But the ones that are struggling are the ones that haven't got that skill set, you know. So they're in education and, and I just think, go right back to the beginning of the journey, at four years old. These kids don't get the choice. They're told you're going to school from four till 16. That's it, that's your education journey, and by the end of it, 16-year-old, you're going to sit in exam halls and we're going to test you on the same sequence of questions and you're either going to be told that you're really really clever or you're not. You're not successful. So but again, I always think well, if you did testing, if you'd have put us all in the hole at the end of your life and gave me a construction task or the ability to build a flat part piece of furniture, I'd have probably been in the bottom half of my year group. But, as I said before, my skill sets, fortunately for me, are celebrated in school. You know, I'm able to access the curriculum confidently.

Speaker 2:

But we're failing, you know, right at the beginning, because we need to teach people how to communicate effectively, but also then we need to give adults the space in the school to be able to communicate effectively as well. Because what we see so often is raised voices or you know that don't happen if you're not stressed. It doesn't that you know so, but we have a policy and it's never happened. But I said to staff look, if I hear you raising your voice at a child, he's human, having a conversation with, not child. That's not because I'm going to undermine them, that's because I'm going to check in on them.

Speaker 2:

Because actually, as a head, if I went into my staff room and I lambasted a member of staff next to all the colleagues, probably getting the unions in the next day, to be honest, you know there's going to be a reaction there. That's not going to be if I'm naming and shaming you on my board for not paying your brew fund. There's probably two options in that situation probably either gonna not paying it now or they're gonna, like laugh at my pretend. They're probably either going to not pain in the arse or they're going to laugh and pretend they're not bothered, but inside they're probably going to feel a bit embarrassed. So when you're naming a child for staying in for five minutes at break on the board at the front of a classroom, it's very rare that you're going to get the reaction that we would hope to get. They're going to probably mask that.

Speaker 1:

I think a lot of those systems work because the vast majority you do get what you want, because most people think you know most kids to mix the metaphor probably just pay the T-fund, you pay your driving, your parking ticket, you get on with it. But actually for the pupils that you're working with, you know they don't operate within that kind of hemisphere, and that's what I wanted to ask you about was in terms of I think it's important to ground this in academia as well, and I think I'd really like just to explore and just unpick what's your reason for you know bedrock, because it was strange when I spoke to your colleagues about bedrock there, I'd obviously never met you, and then we came in, maybe the next week, and you were really quick to to partner up. What, what is it that you're trying to, which? I think the work we're doing with you is really quite exciting? Um, what is it that you are helping? Bedrock will contribute to this journey for the pupils we.

Speaker 2:

We need bedrock, but pupils need bedrock. You know. All pupils need it. By the way, I'm not in a commission here. I mean what I'm saying. We need pupils. If we're going to develop people's social and communication skills, then we need children to be literate, don't we? We need children to be literate and numerate.

Speaker 2:

So again, go back to the academia of GCSEs and these certain grades. But whilst I'm saying that's sometimes not right for our children, what is right is our children need to be able to read and comprehend what they're reading confidently and effectively, because otherwise they're not going to understand the contracts of employment when they're older. They're not going to understand tenancy agreements, they're not even going to be able to access road signs, direction. You know all the things. So we need to make sure that we are really celebrating the importance of, of people not only communicating verbally well, but you know, we need people to be literate and confident in that area. That's where bedrock is going to take us to. You know, know.

Speaker 2:

We've got two our latest appointment now two former heads of English. That's great, but actually it's more than just our heads of English who are going to be working with these children on a day-to-day basis. So we need our staff to make sure that we're focusing and showing how people are literate and numerate. You know equally. So that's why I say Bedrock from this perspective is so powerful for us?

Speaker 1:

yeah, and obviously as well it's.

Speaker 1:

It's a privilege to work with you guys to kind of help you implement and make it really bespoke, because there was a really exciting piece of work around reading, assessment, intervention, subject-specific vocabulary and then, as the as the learners move back into mainstream, they have a report, they have something that goes with them, a diagnostic report that they well, I've not been sat twiddling my thumbs for this time.

Speaker 1:

This is what I've been working on, this is where I'm at now. This is what you can do to support me. So I think it's really important to have transparency and, as you said, not in a patronizing way, but educate the educators by giving them the information they need to help the young people come back, because often they young people come back, because often I've I've been in leading in schools, I've led english, I've been aht often some of these kids get kicked from pillar to post and you think, oh, they're back in, are they? And you've got no concept of what their journey is, and I really think that's going to be a really powerful piece of work that we do alongside you I think as well just just to touch base on that is we say that pupils graduate from lc.

Speaker 2:

When they go back to mainstream, we really celebrate it and we say that they go and we send them a portfolio of. You know. That can include functional skills qualifications. It includes a lot of unit awards and short courses, but having the, the report that they'll get through accessing bedrock as well will be invaluable, like you said, for their perspective, from a child's perspective, they suddenly go back with 10, 11, 12 certificates of I can you know, and that's great. And then the teachers go oh wow, have you seen what they've achieved here? So there's two sides. There's an academic perspective that helps the teachers because they go well, we know they can do that. Academic perspective that helps the teachers because they go right we know they can do that now because we've got this here. But again, far more important than that is it gives the teachers an opportunity to build a relationship because they go brilliant. This is amazing. And they get that immediate opportunity to have a positive interaction. You know, so it's only going to benefit the pupils, the schools. So it's only going to benefit the pupils, the schools and us massively.

Speaker 2:

But we can't talk about my. You know I can't sit here with any integrity and talk about my commitment to social communication and my feeling of how powerful that is if I don't invest in literacy and numeracy, because they are really, are really really important tools of communicating. You know, we're not in a generation where we always meet face to face and, yeah, we're meeting virtually now, which is still, you know, verbal, but but actually we're in a generation that communicates via emails. You know, by a message, you know by platforms, that these kids need to understand, that they can and they need to understand how to seek support if, if they need support, and in school, that's fine, go and find you, you safe person, excuse me, sorry, sorry, I struggled in my maths lesson, would you have to speak to? So I mean, because that's fine, but if they're not in that context, they need to be able to send an email that gets the right response, don't they? And that again comes back to the literacy and the support it comes to literacy isn't it?

Speaker 1:

I mean, that's a really powerful place to finish, I'm aware that I've taken this over, but that's been incredible. I know there'll be people asking questions. I know that people will be looking you guys up after this. Every time I speak to you, I feel energised. Every time I work with you guys, I feel energized. It's it's awesome what you're doing, um, so thank you so much for spending the time with us this morning. It's been a privilege and, um, I can't wait to continue to continue working with you guys, um, and thank you everyone for continuing to listen. Please make sure you like and subscribe um to hear more from people like christian colleagues who are genuinely changing people's lives every day. Christian. It's been an absolute privilege. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, I've enjoyed it. I really appreciate you having me on. Thank you.

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Andy Sammons

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