One Belfast project takes on children who have dropped out of conventional education. Susan McKay talks to pupils and staff at Newstart
It's Sean's first day at Newstart and he reckons it "seems alright". Sean is 15, and after years of conflict with teachers and "beaking off" he got thrown out of school last year. Now he has a place in this alternative education project, where he joins 16 other Belfast teenagers whose experience of normal schooling has been disastrous, and who have now got another chance to make education work for them.
Sean can't have been an easy pupil to handle in a typically large West Belfast class. "I got threw out for messing about, cursing at teachers and all," he says. "I didn't like them. They were cheeky. They were allowed to shout at you and all." His parents were "cracking up" over the trouble he was in at school. "They were shouting at me all the time. I'd just turn off. I'd just walk away." He lifts his baseball hat and scratches his head. He seems sort of embarrassed about his story, sort of puzzled, sort of defiant. "It's good here," he says. "You can do what you like."
Stephany (15), who is starting her second year at Newstart, corrects him. "No you can't," she says. "You can get thrown out of here, too. You get a strike and then another and if you get a third one you get put out. You can't come in smoking dope and slobbering at the teachers. You can't go mad and wreck the place." Stephany stopped going to school when she was 12. "I just hated everything about it. It's brilliant here. They treat you like normal. In school you can't smoke or wear your jewellery. Here you can play snooker and you're allowed to curse and you can listen to music."
Stephany was out of school for more than a year before she got a place in Newstart. Her sister had a place in the project before her. Ellen (15) who is also starting into her second year, had the same experience. "My wee brother wanted a place here, too. He was like Sean; he was mad. I don't think the EWOs [ education and welfare officers] do enough. My mate had no place to go. She got thrown out for cheek. She used to set the fire alarms off. She ended up in a special education school and she didn't need special education."
She turns to Sean. "That's Anthony's girl," she says. He laughs. "Take her to be mad to go with him," he says. "Do you know Charlie? He's a header."
They talk about another friend who died recently, aged 14. "He was blocked. Drunk, you know," says Kirstin, who is 13, and at Newstart because, she says, she was bullied at school by students and teachers. "He fell onto the road and someone brought him to the hospital and he panicked and ran away. He dodged across the motorway and he got hit by three cars. He was trying to find the quickest way home." Ellen smiles sadly. "It's just this mad Belfast thing," she says.
Stephany turns the pages on the flipchart the group has been working at on the first morning of term. They've been writing the contract under which they will work. They've agreed not to come in under the influence of drugs and not to bring drugs onto the premises. They will "make an attempt not to come in with hangovers". They will speak to others as they would like to be spoken to. They won't shout, they will listen, they will "watch bad language" and there will be no bullying.
Newstart is on the Springfield Road in west Belfast, in the news last week because of intense rioting by loyalists on the other side of the high fence that used to be called the peaceline, but is now more realistically referred to as the interface. This is the heart of one of the North's most disadvantaged and troubled areas, and the students on the project come from mostly Catholic backgrounds, including some of the most marginalised families. But Newstart is non-denominational, one of seven such projects in Belfast. It should only have 12 students, and is full to capacity with 17 this year. There is a waiting list of 10.
Mairead McCafferty is its director. "The number of disengaged young people in Belfast is scary, and rising," she says. "No one seems to be looking at the long-term impact of cutbacks in mainstream education. They've cut language support services and classroom assistants. There are many, many reasons why mainstream education doesn't work for some young people. For some, it is just too academic.
"We have to keep our numbers low because we work very intensively with each young person and with their family. We have seven staff as well as volunteers. Each young person has a key worker. If they are having a bad day, instead of disrupting the class, we encourage them to go and talk to someone. It may emerge that they didn't get to bed the previous night because something was going on at home. We have had children here who were primary family carers at the age of 14. We've had children from homes in which there is domestic violence or drink and drugs problems. There is a very high rate of suicide and self harm among the young in west Belfast. One of our young people ended her life, and her boyfriend had done the same. That was very hard for us."
The project was set up by community workers in 1989 to divert young people from the lethal activity known then as joyriding, now called car crime. Initially, it provided training in car maintenance, and some of the original participants are now skilled mechanics. Now it involves a mix of academic and vocational subjects, along with personal, social and health education, and outdoor pursuits like mountaineering.
"These are challenging young people but if you treat them properly, they start to respond to that," says McCafferty. "Their confidence grows. Sometimes they've been told that they are stupid and failures. Coming here isn't an easy ride for them. The focus is on taking responsibility for your life. They learn that they have to start wising up and catching a grip."
