Presentation from Huntingdon Academy & Nottingham City Council
Minutes:
Councillor Cheryl Barnard, Chair of SACRE, joined and took the Chair for the remainder of the meeting. Councillor Sajid Mohammed joined the meeting.
Rebecca Riley, Head of School for Huntingdon Academy, delivered a presentation on Huntingdon Academy’s response to the 2023 Nottingham attacks, in which Ian Coates, who worked at Huntingdon Academy and was well-known in the community, was killed. She raised the following points:
(a) Huntingdon Academy is a multicultural school, comprising many beliefs and faiths, and staff do a lot of work to promote tolerance, acceptance, and curiosity about different faiths;
(b) the attacks in 2023 caused panic and confusion. It was crucial to think carefully about how to communicate with the children, the staff team, the parents, and with the community. Huntingdon’s leadership team drew on the Trauma Council’s Critical Incident guidance to develop the school’s response, resting on five principles: safe, calm, connected, in control, and hopeful;
(c) safety is the first principle, both in the lockdown of the school, but also the need foster a feeling of safety when this is threatened by a traumatic incident. Even though it was difficult for the team, it was important that the school gates opened the next day, giving people routine, stability, and enabling the children to see trusted adults. The incident was difficult for parents who had experienced trauma themselves, particularly those who came to the UK seeking safety. Staff were supported in their own response, and were given a script to support age-appropriate conversations with the children;
(d) calmness is the second principle. It was important to ensure the team kept gathering together and communicating, and that the leadership team listened to staff about their needs at different moments. Lisa DeSouza, Senior Educational Psychologist, supported the school through the process, helping to create a safe space to talk for staff and parents;
(e) connection is the third principle, and is crucially important for reaching the stages of feeling in control and hopeful. It is important that the children do not feel the world is just a dangerous place, but to show that there is kindness in it, and the school took ‘Love Wins’ as its slogan;
(f) the school hosted a community event centred on Ian, to raise money for a memorial garden, and many members of the community supported it and gave their time, making it the biggest event the school had ever held. At Christmas, the school continued Ian’s tradition of making festive displays, with children and their families contributing sections of the display.
Nick Lee, Director of Education, spoke about the Educational Psychology team and made the following points:
(g) the Educational Psychology service has been working on improving the Education Department’s understanding of trauma and the impact on children, and does a lot of work with refugee and asylum seeker children, as well as work with the Mental Health in Schools team. The City has developed real expertise in dealing with trauma;
(h) the team’s approach is to work with schools to build capacity and skills to respond to traumatic events, building scripts to help support staff themselves, as well as to guide interactions with children and young people, and parents when appropriate;
(i) this is not core funded, but reliant on grant funding and other funding streams, including a traded offer with schools. It has a huge number of benefits, attracting, developing, and maintaining the core Educational Psychology service, which is a statutory service.
In the discussion which followed, and in response to questions from SACRE members, the following points were made:
(j) intrusive media attention made the situation harder and complicated the school’s communication with the children. Colleagues at the Council, including Community Protection, supported the school around this;
(k) due to the range of individual needs and communication styles, it was decided that it would be most appropriate to support parents in communicating the news to their children rather than having teachers delivering the news in classes. Parents fed back that they were very glad it was communicated in this way, due to the need to tailor communication to the individuals. Guidance was provided for parents in how to have this conversation, and teachers facilitated further conversations afterwards;
(l) there were concerns that false media reports that it was a terror attack might divide the children and the community, but this did not occur. The school’s focus was on hope and kindness, and the community response was about togetherness in the face of the tragedy rather than division;
(m) SACRE members discussed how RE is strongly placed to help equip schools with the skills to respond to distressing incidents and events that may divide the community, building a respect for different faiths and traditions, and helping children to practice skills at discussing complex issues in a respectful and healthy way. For instance, Black Theology can be useful to spark conversations around race, and themes in the Nottinghamshire Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy can be woven into RE. Good RE is helps to build the potential for wonder and joy, and teaches children about how to build healthy relationships;
(n) Huntingdon Academy is an RSE school, and conducts RSE assemblies in which children sit in circles to discuss something relevant from the news, which builds skills for healthy debates and discussion.