Pupils at Continuum school, Canvey Island in Essex. The school, whose pupils have emotional and behavioural difficulties, sparked a furore when it opened last September. Photograph: Graham Turner
The Continuum school, Canvey Island, is an anonymous-looking place, tucked away down a side street on a gently decaying bit of the Essex coast. Inside, pupils and staff are winding up their day with a little awards ceremony – a bag of sweets for youngsters who managed their best behaviour during the day.
Callum Stimson, 14, has just had a bag of Haribos and is fizzing with energy. "I got six points in one lesson!" he exclaims. "The teachers are nicer here than at my old school and the classes are smaller. So I don't cause any trouble."
A casual visitor might be surprised to learn that when this small special school opened its doors last September it sparked a furore. There were complaints to Ofsted, a poster campaign, a public meeting, even questions in parliament – all with the clear aim of having the unit closed down. Why? Because its pupils have emotional and behavioural difficulties (EBD) and, therefore, according to local residents and their MP, they shouldn't be there. These teenagers, the protesters say, are not fit to be educated in a residential area.
Nationally, the number of
young people classified as having behavioural problems is rising fast – there were 150,000 last year; a 25% increase in four years. So this local row raises questions that resonate well beyond the bridges that carry the traffic away from Canvey Island. Is it becoming increasingly common for people to refuse to live alongside these difficult pupils? Are we perhaps even experiencing a wave of nimbyism that extends not just to the sometimes unlovable "EBD" child but to other children and young people in general?
Around the country, similar disputes have been arising, though mostly on a less epic scale. In Somerset, a planning committee objected to the siting of a nursery in a residential area. In Gloucestershire, residents were up in arms when a secondary school applied to put in a new football pitch close to neighbouring homes. Down the road from Continuum, in Benfleet, Essex county council was forced to withdraw plans for a Sure Start centre at a local primary school because of complaints it would be too close to nearby homes.
The problem of where to put difficult teenagers is one that Bob Hall, the managing director of the Continuum group, which runs 12 independent special
schools and 70 children's homes, grapples with daily.
"It is a growing issue," he says over a cup of tea in one of the Canvey school's tiny classrooms, where the 16 pupils work in groups of four with two staff. "You can't open a provision like this and not expect people to object – you never hear from the people who understand, but you always hear from the ones who are against you."
Hall says he was under no illusions when Essex county council asked him to provide a total of 80 places in three new special schools – he knew it wasn't going to be easy. He initially submitted an application to put the school on an industrial estate in Basildon, but in June last year – three months before the school was due to open – the local planning committee rejected the scheme. There'd be problems with access, it said – but Hall claims the underlying message was clear: teenagers with problems weren't welcome.
So Continuum's workmen moved in to this former doctors' surgery on Canvey Island, which had one major advantage – it didn't require permission for change of use because it was in the same category as a school for planning purposes.
Hall says he knew that when local residents got wind of the conversion, they were bound to be upset. But what happened next must have surpassed all his expectations – not least, he admits, because the school's pupils didn't begin by endearing themselves to their neighbours. There were complaints that in the first few days, some of them got on the roof and began throwing tiles; the local pharmacy reported youths barging their way behind its counter.
"Mistakes were made," Hall says. "There was rowdy behaviour. There was bad language. They would go into the shops and they would swear. But when you have young people like these you have a settling-in period whilst peer groups are established and they get to know one another. We haven't had a complaint now for weeks and weeks."
The rumpus might have died down as quickly as it arose had it not been for the involvement of the local Castle Point MP, Bob Spink, a former Conservative who is now independent. He made the issue a personal crusade, leafleting the area, calling a public meeting to protest at the school's presence and questioning ministers in the House of Commons, demanding its closure. Residential areas were not the right places to educate the wayward, he said.
At a public meeting in October, there were angry exchanges. Local education officials and even a community policewoman spoke up for the school, but Spink remained unconvinced.
"The officers who came to the meeting were totally offensive," he says. "They said I shouldn't call these out-of-control youths 'yobs'. They said I should seek to understand these children have had a difficult time. I said, 'No, they're yobs. We should confront bad behaviour and stop it, not tolerate it'."
Unimpressed by the response he got at the meeting, Spink continued his campaign, complaining to Ofsted that the school posed a safety hazard. An inspector duly arrived, unannounced, on a day when the pupils were due to go out. When they were told they couldn't because the inspector was there, they misbehaved and a critical report was posted on Ofsted's website. The school fired off a lengthy complaint; Ofsted withdrew the report and is investigating the incident.
Spink followed through in parliament, questioning education ministers at every opportunity and, finally, in January this year, Gordon Brown. "Teenage tearaways" were terrorising elderly residents, he said. Essex county council should be ashamed of its behaviour.
The prime minister responded, blandly, that no one should be expected to suffer from antisocial behaviour. But Spink's point had hit home.
Essex county council issued a statement saying it viewed the Canvey site as temporary, and that it was looking for alternatives. Spink remains determined to continue his campaign until the school is moved.
"We get difficult children and we must try to put them back on the right tracks, society has a duty, I totally accept that," he says. "But the area already had problems with antisocial behaviour. Fancy sending a group of bad lads to somewhere like that."
The saga of the beleaguered Canvey Island Continuum school does not come as a shock to the wider community of special needs experts. Claire Dorer, chief executive of the National Association of Independent Schools and Non-Maintained Special Schools, says local residents often react with alarm to the opening of new facilities. But, she says, in most cases their fears are allayed once they get used to their new neighbours.
"We do come across these issues in terms of anxiety from local communities about what having a school for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties might mean for them. If you ask people if they would like 50 difficult 15-year-old boys at the end of their garden, they will say no," she says.
"But our experience is when young people are given the chance to have their needs met, they don't display the same level of behaviour. And, generally, local communities end up being fairly welcoming."
Perhaps a case in point is the Grafham Grange Special Educational Trust at Bramley, Surrey, which met resistance from planners when it applied to put in a new football pitch – there were concerns that the floodlighting would cause a nuisance and would be inappropriate because the building was Grade 2 listed.
The trust's chief executive, Susan Tresman, decided to meet the issue head-on, and immediately set about wooing the decision-makers.
"We had a very forthright meeting on the site, she says. "I introduced them to some of our students. And it was brilliant. That was the beginning of what's become an extremely productive relationship."
Tresman says the key is to welcome in the local community, and to involve it. Now local football teams come every week to use her school's pitches.
"You do need to be resilient and creative, and to be prepared to challenge in a positive way," she says. "We don't want people to pass by at the end of the drive and say: 'We don't know who's in there'."
Back at the Continuum school, Hall remains unrepentant about his more bullish approach.
"These pupils just weren't getting an education," he says. "Our mistake, if it was a mistake, was bringing them quickly into a new facility. I don't apologise for that because the only other option was for them to be on the street – it was the right thing to do."
