Meeting with Mr Bull

Present: JN, AB, Henry Howeld, Obai Ermak

Agenda

• Hair Concerns
• SIMS Categories
• PSHE/SMSC
• Halal Foods

Hair Concerns

Henry challenged the Head, asking specifically how a particular haircut might affect the learning that takes place in a classroom. Henry wanted to know what the school’s official stance on this matter was as all documentation in planners seems to be outdated.

Mr Bull’s response was that there are certain ‘legacy issues’ that he will look to bring up in due course with the Governors but that it was their decision.

When asked directly: ‘Will the policy be reviewed?’ Mr Bull agreed that Henry would be given the opportunity to present this issue to the Governors when the policy was reviewed.

Mr North pushed the point that the issue with hair was part of a bigger picture, where this leads to a suppression of identity and possible acts of discrimination (lines in hair and certain members of staff telling boys to ‘colour the line in’).

Mr Bull stated that he had worked in many schools and that rules regarding lines in hair (as an example) are reflective of ‘trends’ that ‘come and go’. His feelings were that uniform policy should not be beholden to those ‘trends’.

Mr Bull will be meeting with the Chair of Governors on Tuesday 15th November and he will feedback feelings about uniform policy review to Mr North.

Conclusion from Obai: hair issue is only smaller part of bigger picture, Obai’s concern is that the hair issue is a peripheral and that there are bigger concerns around the school.

Categories on SIMS

Mr Bull expressed that their were too many categories on SIMs.

Mr North stated that one of our goals for the Governors was to audit issues of discrimination, therefore we needed to be specific in our collection of data.

An interim measure was agreed that a ‘Discrimination’ would appear as a category, with a possible drop down menu that made it clear what form the discrimination had taken.

A time frame will be agreed to for this, it will tie in with the SIMS tidy up being done by Ms Wilberforce and Mr Atherton. JN will follow this up with them.

Obai expressed the concern that sanctions were more severe if a student acted inappropriately towards a member of staff in comparison to a student. Mr Bull’s response was that he hoped to see a ‘culture change’ and that it was something he was working to address.

After relaying Mr Bull’s SIMS suggestion to the Equalities Group, it was decided that his suggestion was unacceptable and that JN would feed this back to Mr Bull.

PSHE

In light of recent acts of discrimination around the school and the sexist assault of a member of staff, Mr North challenged further what is being done to meet the social, moral, spiritual and cultural(SMSC) needs of students across the curriculum.

Mr Bull stated that there wasn’t a specific place for PSHE style lessons but that the intention of moving form time was to move towards introducing something like this. He wanted to ensure that a programme would be well structured and suggested we look at two initiatives (the Rights Respecting School Award by UNICEF and the EQualities award).

Henry expressed the concern that this looked good on the surface but wanted to know specifically why it was needed in comparison to making changes across the curriculum. JN and Henry also mentioned that they had trialled an optional curriculum for Enrichment lessons across key stage 3. We will be sharing that with Mr Bull.

Halal Foods

At this point in the meeting, we had been with Mr Bull for 45 minutes and he was apparently 15 minutes late for his next meeting.

Mr Bull suggested that we meet again within the next fortnight for a follow up meeting.