You can almost hear the film executives: ‘hey you know Slumdog Millionaire was such a success and so was Ladies in Lavender, why don’t we just combine the two – a set of wistful old English people set against an exotic Indian background? And then throw in some other British stars like Tom Wilkinson and Ronald Pickup and for laughs we could add two of those sly Calendar Girls. We have a ready audience with all those grey pounders.’ I know it did not happen like that since this film is based on a 2004 book by Deborah Moggach. But from start to finish I found this film synthetic, contrived and manipulative.

If The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is a feel good film, give me feel bad any time. It is deeply offensive to Indians, India and the elderly – composed as it is of stereotypes, clichés and downright mistakes – whilst simultaneously appearing to take on racial prejudice (of working-class needer of hip replacement played by Maggie Smith, unable to really throw off Lady Bracknell via Downton Abbey) and xenophobia (of middle-class end-of-marriage wife played by Penelope Wilton). The colonialism revealed in the film is so palpable I am not sure when irony was intended: Tom Wilkinson’s former high court judge character has to show young street children how to hold a cricket bat; Maggie Smith, though supposedly just a former domestic servant, has to show Indians how to run a hotel; Judi Dench has to teach call centre workers how to be human on the phone (and presumably therefore, sell us that more efficiently services we do not want).

We are being invited to sample India, but it is a cultural India of the tourist brochure and guide book – where everything is glossed over. So we see a call centre (India is modern) but everyone is smiling and laughing and we are being told to laugh at their silly English. There is no alienation, no sense of the exploitation and isolation of such work. We are introduced to a Dalit, and she is not just in impeccable sari but also preparing food for the hotel. Really?

But by far the most offensive element in the film is the playing of the incompetent hotel manager by Dev Patel of Slumdog Millionaire fame. His portrayal – played only for laughs and bearing no true characterisation – was more reminiscent of Peter Sellers in The Millionairess than anyone you could meet in Jaipur. And then there is the ‘character’ of India itself. Once again, as in Slumdog Millionaire, there is a gratuitous use of clichéd long panning shots of streets, jostling crowds, traffic jams, markets, festivals, even funeral pyres and bathers on the Ghats of the river. We, the viewers, like the English characters, are being assailed by noise and sights (and implicitly smells) and very, very gently being chided against being judgmental.

Those little Englanders who never got over the loss of empire and are ill at ease with multiculturalism will absolutely love it. They can feel at home and yet slightly superior as they watch the foibles, loves and lessons learnt of these stock British characters (played by the cream of British thespians) set in an exotic location. Smugness is, unfortunately, woven into the film via the voice-over of the Judi Dench character’s daily blog. (Yes isn’t it funny, the silver surfers have mastered technology!) This narrative of her and the others’ personal journeys is as cloying as it is predictable.

The film will be a great box office hit – this is just how Daily Mail readers need to experience globalisation.

On 9 April 2012, Alain Hatungimana, a 36-year-old Burundian facing deportation with his two children, took his own life in a desperate attempt to prevent his children’s removal. Fourteen-year-old Abdillah and 12-year-old Maimuna, who had arrived with their father five years ago, had already lost their mother in the civil war between Hutus and Tutsis. Friends said Hatungimana was depressed and fearful for his and his children’s future.[1]

It was the second suicide in Holland in four months: on 28 December, a mentally ill 41-year-old Sri Lankan asylum seeker killed himself at Schipol airport’s reception centre after his application to stay was refused.[2] Research by the Mental Health Department of the Association of Community Health Services reveals that 40 asylum seekers took their own lives between 2002 and 2010. Another 290 attempted suicide. The inhumanity of the long-drawn-out asylum process in the Netherlands, during which no work is permitted, frequently causes depression and anxiety to already traumatised people, according to a spokesman for the Burundian community in the Netherlands. Psychiatrist Kees Laban said that asylum seekers are difficult to treat because they have so few prospects. ‘Hope is very much tied up with things like being seen and heard and being part of society.’[3]

In the concern for his children’s future which apparently drove him, Hatungimana’s death echoes that of Manuel Bravo, an Angolan asylum seeker who hanged himself in the notorious Yarl’s Wood removal centre on the eve of his deportation in September 2005. Bravo, who had settled in Leeds where he attended the local church, was arrested for deportation with his 13-year-old son Antonio, for whom he left a note urging him to ‘be brave, work hard and do well at school’. In the aftermath of his death, a project was set up in Leeds, the Manuel Bravo project, to provide asylum seekers with free legal assistance, as Bravo had been forced to represent himself on his asylum appeal in 2002 for want of legal representation.[4]

Conflict over allowing children to stay

Hatungimana’s suicide also revealed the growing gulf between local and central government in their response to children of asylum seeking families. The Culemborg local authority, where the Hatungimanas lived, adopted a supportive attitude to the family; in August 2011 it had asked immigration minister Gerd Leers to exercise his discretion to allow the family to remain in the Netherlands, but its plea was rejected despite their integration into the community. Following the death, the local council has said it will ‘do everything possible to keep the children’ in the country, while teachers from the local school attended Mr Hatungimana’s funeral.

The local authority’s approach in the Hatungimana case mirrors that of over 145 local authorities, including those of the Netherlands’ biggest cities Amsterdam and Utrecht, which have supported a petition proposing that asylum seeking children are allowed to stay in the country after eight years in the process (five years for children in the Netherlands without parents or relatives).[5] The petition, launched by Green Left MP Tofik Dibi in December and signed by around 120,000 people by March 2012, follows a Bill introduced in October 2011 by the Labour Party and the Christian Union. The Bill was doomed to fail through the opposition of Geert Wilders’ far-right Freedom Party and the Council of State’s denunciation of it as ‘unfair’ in February 2012.[6]

A number of controversial deportation decisions led to the Bill and the support for the petition among local authorities. They included Saher, the 14-year-old Afghan girl who had spent ten years in the asylum process, spoke perfect Dutch and had become a strong supporter of the Dutch national football team, and Mauro Manuel, the 18-year-old Angolan boy who arrived as an unaccompanied asylum seeker when he was 10. After widespread publicity and anger at the proposed deportation both teenagers received last-minute reprieves.

Stand-off

But the row between central and local government goes further than the treatment of children. Increasingly, local authorities are looking askance at central government’s tough stance on undocumented migrants and refused asylum seekers. Local authorities reacted with anger to the immigration minister’s decision to impose a quota on police to encourage them to round up more undocumented migrants, and in March the mayors of 17 cities expressed their unwillingness to cooperate with the quota, set at 4,800 for the year.[7] At the beginning of April, around 40 mayors, representing the areas where reception and removal centres are located, wrote to the immigration minister saying they would not cooperate with deportations if there was a risk to public order. When minister Gerd Leers said that police must follow his orders, they responded that the police are answerable to local authorities, not to the immigration minister.[8]

‘Municipalities, organisations and citizens are raising the alarm about asylum policies more and more often’, said Sharon Gesthuizen (Socialist Party MP). Together with Christian Union MP Joel Voordwind, she believes that minister Leers should listen far more to the mayors when it comes to deciding whether or not deportation should take place.

The collapse of the Dutch government as the Freedom Party withdrew its support for the minority administration in April perhaps gives these local authorities a chance to lead public opinion in stopping deportations. They will need all their courage, as Wilders’ Freedom Party cranks up the xenophobic, anti-immigration and anti-Muslim rhetoric for the September elections.

Related links

Read the IRR’s Briefing Paper no. 4 on Accelerated removals: a study of the human cost of EU deportation policies, 2009-2010

• Wednesday 16 May 2012, 9.30-4pm
• The Conference Room of the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund, Riverside Building, County Hall, Westminster Bridge Road, London 
SE1 7PB

Speakers include:

• chaired by Dr. Maggie Atkinson – Children’s Commissioner for England
• Adele Eastman – Centre for Social Justice
• Professor Gus John – Institution of Education and Chair of the Communities Empowerment Network (CEN)
• Gary Philips – headmaster of the Lilian Baylis Technology School in Lambeth

Related links

Communities Empowerment Network (CEN)

View more details abut the conference

In March, the Children’s Commissioner published the report of her first formal inquiry on schools exclusions after eight months of evidence-gathering by her team supported by a panel of experts. They listened to children and adults alike, as well as taking account of written evidence across the country. Besides analysing the nationally published data by the Department for Education (DfE), additional data from Ofsted, the Local Government Ombudsman, and a representative sample of forty local authorities was used.

One of the triggers for the inquiry was a survey commissioned to gather views of a representative sample of 2,000 children and young people on what makes a school a triumph, a challenge or a disaster. Eight out of ten said they had experienced disruption in learning caused by the bad behaviour of a minority, yet nine out of ten insisted schools should never exclude a child. One in seven said that their school always got exclusions decisions right.

Key findings

The report, They never give up on you, notes that both permanent and fixed term exclusions have fallen steadily over the past decade. In 2009-10, 5,740 pupils were permanently excluded representing 0.08 per cent. Although this is miniscule in percentage terms, the number would fill about ten secondary schools. However, 179,800 pupils (2.4 per cent) were excluded on a fixed term basis at least once, 97 per cent of these were for periods of less than a week. In primary schools alone, some 620 children were excluded permanently, including 220 under-7s. Around 37,000 primary age pupils were excluded for a fixed term.

Pupils with Special Educational Needs (SEN) were eight times more likely to be permanently excluded compared to their peers. Pupils with SEN statements were seven times more likely to be excluded whilst those without statements were nine times more likely to be excluded. More than two-thirds of all permanently excluded children have some form of identified SEN. Black Caribbean pupils were almost four times more likely to be permanently excluded and boys were eleven times more likely to be permanently excluded than white girls of the same age in similar schools. The same boys were thirty-seven times more likely to be permanently excluded than Indian girls, who had the lowest rate of exclusion. Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children were four times more likely to be permanently excluded. The permanent exclusion rate for boys was approximately four times higher than that for girls. Boys represented 78 per cent of the total number of permanent exclusions. Children eligible for free school meals (FSM) were around four times more likely to be permanently excluded.

The rate of fixed-term exclusions were also higher for these groups. Seventeen per cent of Irish Traveller children, 15 per cent of Gypsy and Roma Traveller children and 11 per cent of Black Caribbean children received such fixed-term exclusions. Boys were almost three times more likely than girls to be excluded and accounted for 75 per cent of all fixed-term exclusions. Children on FSM were around three times more likely to be excluded for a fixed term.

An analysis was made to ascertain the relative importance of these factors, one against the other and in combination. To illustrate the impacts on individual children, the report asks us to imagine two hypothetical young people: Jack and Jill who are both of the same age, and attend the same school. Jack is of black Caribbean background with SEN and lives in a low-income household and hence on FSM. Jill is from a white British background, does not have SEN and lives in a more affluent household. The analysis showed that Jack is 168 times more likely than Jill to be permanently excluded from school before the age of 16, and 41 times more likely than she is to be excluded for a fixed term. This ‘One stark figure’, according to the Commissioner, ‘should make us all want to confront this scandal’. Although the report refrains from using the term discrimination and also the terms race and class, it asserts that little has been done in policy and practice to tackle the disturbing entrenched discrimination by race, class, gender and SEN over the decades.

Counter intuitively, analysis also showed that children from the relevant ethnic groups were much more likely to be excluded when they were in a small minority in a school than when they were with larger numbers of children from the same ethnic group as themselves.

Consequences and criticisms

The report reviews the research on the consequences of exclusion. Many children who have been permanently excluded do not re-engage with formal education before school-leaving age. Forty per cent of 16-18 year olds who are not in education, employment or training (NEETs), had previously been excluded from school. Over half of young offenders in custody have, at some time before they ended up there, been excluded from school. The report estimates the cost as £10,000 for the management costs of each exclusion; £14,000 for supporting each excluded pupil in a pupil referral unit, and £64,000 to society over a life time.

Most significantly, the inquiry found evidence of several examples of schools excluding pupils ‘illegally’ by requiring the young person to leave premises without recording it as a formal exclusion. These ‘sharp practices’ included unrecorded short-term exclusions to allow children to ‘cool off’, students being ‘sent home’ and not allowed back into school until after a meeting had taken place with their parents, students being sent home as pressure was exerted on the parents to move them to a different school, and in one extreme case, a head teacher sent some Year 11 pupils home from Christmas until May, else they would have faced permanent exclusion. Furthermore, some academies were attempting to avoid scrutiny of their exclusions by external Independent Appeal Panels (IAP), and refusing to hear appeals from parents.

Both these matters are breaches of the law and the report calls on the secretary of state to fully investigate these accusations and take appropriate statutory measures to curtail these practices. It also calls on the government to conduct research to identify the full extent of unlawful exclusions.

The inquiry found that exclusions were often used for trivial reasons such as breaches of uniform rules or the wearing of jewellery. The report considered this inappropriate and calls upon the DfE to issue guidance on the principles of exclusion thresholds. Two such principles would be that exclusion should only happen to protect health and safety of pupils and prevent disruption to learning. They should be used as a last resort and under exceptional circumstances in case of assault or carrying weapons or supplying of illegal drugs. The report recommends that there should be a presumption against permanent exclusions from primary schools and no primary school should permanently exclude a child in Reception or Key Stage 1. Furthermore, a school should not act unilaterally to permanently exclude a child who has the school named as specified provision on a statement of SEN without triggering a review of the child’s statement.

The inquiry examined good practice regarding strategies to prevent exclusions and models being used as alternatives to exclusion. Many parts of England operate ’managed move’ systems as an alternative to formal exclusions whereby when it is untenable for a pupil to continue in one school, a move to another is managed by agreement without a formal exclusion. The report recommends that the DfE issue guidance on good practice and professional development of school leaders, teachers and trainees which includes all the necessary strategies to create a good learning environment and prevent exclusions.

The report calls on Ofsted to monitor exclusions data for schools over a rolling three-year period and if trends give cause for concern, this should trigger a full inspection. Furthermore, Ofsted should classify schools automatically as ‘inadequate’ if unlawful activities are found.

To close the gaps in the differentials in exclusion, the report pins hope on the implementation of the Equalities Act 2010, clear guidance from DfE in collaboration with the Equality and Human Rights Commission and robust inspection of exclusions by Ofsted. However, the inquiry puts its reservations starkly: ‘The evidence does not give us confidence that schools will carry out this necessary work without further insistence by Government.’

The real problem is that the Coalition’s policy is moving in the opposite direction. The Education Act of 2011 has removed the rights of a parent’s to appeal to an Independent Appeal Panel against permanent exclusion and replaced this with an Independent Review Panel with reduced powers which cannot require a school to reinstate a pupil whom they judge to have been unfairly excluded. The government has also moved to make the statutory guidance on exclusions less prescriptive. Rightly the report calls for the reinstatement of the Independent Appeal Panel.

Michael Gove’s education revolution has further fragmented the stratified education system by the creation of free schools and academies with power moving into the hands of private sponsors and operators. This increasing privatisation is going to make schools less accountable to parents and the local community which they serve. Hence we see academies flouting school regulations and there is no reason to believe that free schools will not do the same. Elected local authorities that once could hold school management to account have been neutered. The competitive pressures through league tables and the spectre of being labelled a ‘failed’ school by Ofsted have produced a school culture where management resorts to covert exclusions to suggest better performance.

Both the right-wing media chorus and the government consider a head teacher’s authority to be sacrosanct with little concern for accountability. However the damage to the lives of children through discriminatory exclusions and its social costs are so high that the best policy would be to remove exclusion as a sanction whilst providing head teachers with a well funded multi-agency professional team and local frameworks to deal with disruptive pupils. If schools in other European countries can work without exclusion as a sanction, so can schools in this country.

Related links

The Children’s Commissioner for England

This excellent new play shows a black middle-class family whose young teenage son is keeping a secret – his daily interactions with the police and a collection of over thirty records of being stopped and searched. As a result, he harbours a hatred for the police officers who carry out the stops. The repeated stop and searches drive the once placid and innocent youngster to a moment of madness that has far reaching consequences. His parents are left surprised at the extent of the problem. However the reality of many young black boys on the street is that stop and search is no surprise at all – it is a routine part of life in certain areas.

The format of the play is not linear but moves between past memories and present incidents. In some scenes there was a lot going on and, as a result, some of the voiceovers were a little hard to hear and therefore a little hard to connect to the action and sequence of the play. It is creatively staged in an intimate space with good use of the sound and imagery that make up everyday life (mobile phones, background chatter and flashing lights). I saw the play on only its second night, which may explain why some of the performances were a little patchy but there were also some excellent eloquent speeches/ monologues. The young actors, one of whom was making her debut, give excellent performances.

At the start of the play, a chance encounter at a restaurant turns into something darker as the parents of a police officer overhear a conversation. The mother of the police officer cannot imagine that stop and search powers could be abused and suggests it is simply something people should put up with as she butts in to the private conversation of the black couple. Her husband, the borough commander, a study in officiousness, cold, steely and detached power, silently seethes and bristles as his officers are criticised.

His son, despite being a relatively naïve police officer, still knows and remembers all the motions he must go through in order to effect a cover-up. (Is this taught at Hendon Police College?) He plays an officer under the weight of family expectation convincingly, ballsing up his career in spectacular style and ultimately complicit in a heinous act.

The play reveals the end of innocence as the events unfold. It is the dawning realisation, faced by the black parents, that the police are not there to protect and serve that hits the hardest. They play the parents divorced from the reality faced by their children convincingly.

Stop Search tells the experience of a single young boy and his family. But the reality is that stop and search effectively targets and criminalises whole communities – a point made by two youngsters in the play. The ending is unexpected – and brutal – but then again, not so unexpected when you think about the inevitable consequences of the abuse of power.

Related links

Catford Broadway Theatre

Buy tickets to see Stop Search

Stop Watch

Open Society Foundation

• Wednesday 9 May 2012, 7.30pm
• Whitstable Labour Club, Belmont Road, Canterbury CT5 1QW

Event includes:

• A short film about Dover Immigration Removal Centre by Levi Roberts and Jess Dadds
• Chris Weller – Activist
• Catherine Carpenter – Kent Law Clinic

Related links

Kent Refugee Help

Having been a former headteacher and Principal Education Officer at the Community Relations Commission/Commission for Race Equality, he helped to establish the Working Group Against Racism in Children’s Resources and thirteen years ago invited me and a couple others to join him in setting up the Communities Empowerment Network (CEN). Over those thirteen years, CEN has dealt with an average of 1,000 school exclusion cases per year, providing advocacy to school students and their parents and representing them at School Governors Disciplinary Committees and at Independent Appeals Panels. Each year, we have taken some deserving cases to Judicial Review and won most of them. Gerry remained the main caseworker for CEN and its unpaid Director until yesterday.

Gerry deplored the punitive approach with which this country deals with children and young people, irrespective of their needs, and fought relentlessly for a more compassionate and children-centred schooling and juvenile justice sustem. He will be remembered for his warmth, generosity, humour and pure grit, especially when confronting injustice.

We give thanks for his extraordinary life and his giving and compassionate spirit.

Peace and hope!

Professor Gus John

Related links

See the Facebook page: Gerry German – A legend!

Communities Empowerment Network

• Friday 11 May 2012, 12.15pm
• The Royal Court Theatre, 50-51 Sloane Square, London SW1W 8AS

Related links

Octavia Foundation

Nu Century Arts

• Friday 18 May 2012, 6pm
• Friends Meeting House, Room 1, 6 Mount Street, Manchester M2 5NS

 Related links

RAPAR

• Friday 11 May 2012 (12-6pm) and Saturday 12 May 2012 (9-2.30pm)
• Amnesty International, The Human Rights Action Centre, 17-25 New Inn Yard, London EC2A 3EA

Speakers include:

• Heaven Crawley – Swansea University
• Scott Blinder – Migration Observatory
• Aine O’Brien – FOMACS
• Donn Flynn – Migrants Rights Network

Related links

Migrant Voice