London’s schools are about to become less safe. The city’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, has decided to appoint Maureen McKenna to join its violence reduction unit (VRU), with a view to reducing crime by ‘driving down exclusions in schools’ while ‘increasing a sense of students’ belonging’.
The VRU has equally noble aims: ‘we believe violence is preventable, not inevitable’, they state. Lib Peck, its director, launched a scheme last year to reduce knife crime by preventing some of the 900 school exclusions a year across London. Glasgow, it was claimed, had seen a 48 per cent reduction in violence across the city since it also decided to reduce exclusions, to almost zero. The person behind this miracle? Maureen McKenna.
Only in education can failure be repackaged as success and rewarded
Who could argue with such success, and Khan’s eagerness to emulate it? Well, anyone who understands challenging schools, research, and the reality of exclusions.
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