I couldn’t understand the difference in the teacher’s treatment of one child and then another who had apparently committed the same offence.  Let me explain.

I had just witnessed the beginning of secondary school day.  As each Year 8 youngster came into the classroom the teacher had a word of friendly enquiry, “How is the budgie Shaun - is it still sick?”  “Did it go well last night Hamil... was your sister pleased?”  “What did your parents think about the essay then Shane?”  Such class tutors are priceless.  I was left reflecting how OFSTED would put a value on the way this teacher effortlessly ensured a really good start to the day, not just for the pupils in her class but her colleagues who would teach them later.  No needless confrontations for her about disputed late arrivers: her pupils wanted to arrive in time anyway for what my Irish relations would call a bit of ‘crack’ and a debate abut whatever she raised as the issue of the day.  Not for her either a hurried arrival herself, nor a staccato race through the register.  Indeed, she was there before the others and quietly marking her OMR during her conversation as each arrived.  But it was the combination of two arrivals which made me pause for thought about equal opportunities.

One of her charges broke the calm by hurling a bag across the room as he arrived.  You know the scene?  A restraining hand and a quiet but disapproving conversation later the youngster accepted his punishment – a detention - without offence.  A few minutes later a similar flying bag from another arriving boy was treated very differently – a long conversation but no punishment, just the promise of a longer discussion at lunchtime when Dean could help the teacher clear a cupboard.  I enquired about the second miscreant by just asking his name of the pupil with whom I was sitting.  “Oh, Dean’s all right really.  He has a lot to put up with sir” the girl replied.

When I enquired about the apparent inconsistency of the teacher, she said that Dean had two younger sisters and was the person who got them up and fed them in the morning and that she had spotted Dean being taunted as he got his younger sisters to primary school that morning.  There was more to it than that as you might imagine and at the end of a long catalogue of obstacles Dean had overcome in his year and a half at secondary school, the teacher concluded “You never treat kids the same do you?  They are all different and they all deserve an equal chance in life.  So that means people like me fitting what you do so that the Deans of the world get that chance”.

Her conversation reminded me of how in schools at peace with themselves staff do not question apparent inconsistencies in the Heads’ or Deputies’ treatment of offending pupils committing similar offences and referred for punishment.  “She must have good reason: she must know something more about it” was the vote of confidence one Head received but never knew about from a young member of staff who had referred a problem pupil.

At the heart of equal opportunity in schools, as distinct from other places, is this eternal dilemma of the teacher - knowing you need to make minute by minute judgements about how to interpret pupils’ behaviour, conscious always that you must treat pupils as they might become rather than as they infuriatingly are.  Equal opportunity is a challenge because children arrive at school with such different - and sometimes difficult to identify - barriers to their learning.  And it is our job to help them overcome them.

In Birmingham a combination of history and the present environment makes the achievement of equal opportunity goals in school the more hard won, but also the more valuable.  Disability, gender and race are often, for convenience, tackled separately though they are closely related.  In Birmingham religion is an issue too.  (What must it feel like for example to be one of the 20% of Muslims in our schools and wonder why Catholics, Anglicans and Jews can attend ‘aided’ schools yet they have little prospect of doing so?)

Employment practices are of course crucial.  Nearly all our schools now monitor applications, shortlists and appointments for race and gender.  And they celebrate successful senior appointments – still desperately few in number - that reflect the success of that policy in practice.  But some schools do not stop there in their quest for positive role models.  The KWESI initiative shows how ‘mentoring’ is a powerful and immediate means of overcoming stereotypes.  So many schools now see ‘mentoring’ anyway as a means of raising individual achievement so they take the chance to use time twice.

Disability however - why is it race and gender, but disability, but not ability? - remains the Cinderella of equal opportunities so far as priority and attention are concerned.  For one thing it is so difficult to find role models among staff.  People can and do hide difficulties in a way which is clearly not possible in the other cases!  Leaving for health reasons moreover is the immediate thought for any one of us suddenly aware that we can no longer work in the way we have before, or to the same extent.  Even though Birmingham is one of the few authorities to earmark funds to help staff, including teachers, accommodate to disability by supplying extra resource in equipment or staff to overcome barriers, few take advantage of it.  Perhaps it is that disability encountered later in life, especially in the energy demanding atmosphere of school, is of a different order than living with disability from birth.  Perhaps it is ignorance of what is available.  Whatever it is, it is unusual to encounter a disabled teacher as a role model.

Karen McLean is therefore a rare example of someone with disability in a mainstream setting.  She runs a unit for the visually impaired in a north Birmingham secondary school.  She is a living example of dedication and no-nonsense determination.  Registered blind she has lived both as learner and later as teacher in two worlds - in the separate environment of the special school as well as in the mainstream, in the special interest voluntary group and in her local community.  For some years she worked with the peripatetic team in providing services to the visually impaired, but in the end found the time and difficulty of travel too much.  From all this and bruising encounters with ignorance and prejudice, Karen emerges as someone determined to ensure that the children in her unit will have a better chance than she has had of living as full a life as possible.  She picks up clues from shape and sound and she relies on others - “as we all do” is how she puts it - to fill in the gaps.  Naturally for her particular world she takes enormous heart from the example of David Blunkett … but the contradictions show through when she settles as her ambition “to run a special school for the blind … perhaps one of my children will be Head of a mainstream school.  Society is not ready for that yet.  David Blunkett is Secretary of State for Education, but a blind Head of a comprehensive school . . . . . . .”

A very experienced and skillful teacher summed up equal opportunity for me when she said that for her in the end it came down to bullying and monitoring.  When I asked her to explain she went on, “Well you see I have never worked anywhere where bullying was not a problem. And bullying creates all those barriers, especially for the most vunerable.  Bullying is the enemy of anyone’s learning and fulfilment.  So we must always seek to eliminate it - in the home, in the street, in the playground, in the classroom and,” she added smiling, “in the staffroom.  Schools need not just bullying policies, they need a range of practices that make bullying less likely and they need to monitor incidents of bullying and seek to change practices to reduce the incidents”.

I did not need to ask about monitoring.  We have no evidence without monitoring.  So we know young people of African Caribbean, Pakistani and Bangladeshi background do not do as well as they should from the schooling system.  Nor do males.  And if you really want to pile on the disadvantage and barrier to successful learning, be all of that and in the care of the local authority.

So, I am glad I encountered that young class tutor and Karen McLean.  They shall stand as proxy for all our determination to make life fairer.