Alex's Adventures in PRUland

No names. No Locations. No dates.

For legal reasons, let us just pretend that these are all made up experiences… let’s pretend that!

I heard a disturbance outside my classroom. There was some strong language, some sounds of impact, sounds of distress. I stepped outside to see a young child, maybe eight-years-old, wielding a fallen tree branch as thick as my arm and at least as long as the boy was tall. He had cornered two members of staff, the Head and her deputy, outside the front door of the PRU. The two members of staff were backed into a privet hedge whilst the child wound back his branch, baseball bat fashion, ready for a swing. I plucked the stick from his hands from my advantageous position behind the lad.

“Gimme my stick back, you ginger fu***** pirate cu**!”

Now, education is all about building relationships and I am delighted to say that by the time I left the PRU that particular young person just called me Ginger Pirate. I’d call that progress. He still asked for his stick back a few times week though…

I started one placement on the same day as seriously built young man. He looked like he could bench press a family saloon car. We got chatting whilst we waited to be directed to our allocations. He had recently left the RAF regiment and had served a ‘lively’ tour out of Camp Bastion, Helmand Province. Not somewhere that I have on my dream holiday list. He was starting as a teaching assistant to the primary part of the PRU; I was to teach science to the secondary students. A month or so later we found ourselves chatting again...o

“I can’t take it Alex, they’re so violent. I’m scared every day. I don’t think I can keep doing this.”

I would never draw a comparison between even the most challenging of PRUs and a war zone. This fella, however, would!

The newest part of one PRU had been freshly decorated. The walls were a pristine and uniform white. By day two every single wall was decorated in tasteful murals of anatomically spurious male genitalia and poems challenging the parentage of various members of staff. On day three these Turner Prize potentials had been masterfully camouflaged behind sheets of A2 paper haphazardly taped to the walls! How can we stifle the expression of such young talent? Staggering!

“OK guys,” I heard from the next classroom (through the recently created window courtesy of an exuberantly swung chair) “Take a Chromebook each...” Smash. Splash. Chromebook through the window and into the waiting pond outside!

Between the different areas of most PRUs are a series of code or fob locked gates and doors. In the outside area of one PRU ten-foot high, spike topped, chain-link fencing ensured that children from different sections with different needs could be kept safely separated. I noticed a lad of primary age, nearly as tall as myself, had come in one morning with his whole leg in plaster. On enquiring of a colleague, I was told that he had broken his femur. Admirable to be back in school so soon, I thought! On one side of the fence was the young gent with a leg rendered immobile, on the other side, three chickens with nothing much planned for the day. I honestly don’t think I could have climbed that fence and yet for this boy of no more than eleven years it was the work of mere seconds to scale and descend, even encumbered by a cast! Apparently, the allure of chickens can be a powerful incentive!

I was teaching physics to class of deeply disinterested year tens on a rainy, grey day. One young lad was lying full length on a table from whence he sprung to his feet before declaring, “I’m going for a fag. Anyone coming?” The whole class emptied. New to this particular PRU, I was unsure what to do. I looked to the TA who bade me to follow. We proceeded outside on the tail of the errant student body. As we walked the TA explained; if they stick together, we were to follow them; if they split up, we each go with part of the group. What if they split into three groups? She shrugged. Oh.

Fortunately, they all stuck together and dashed through the torrential rain and into a bike shelter emblazoned with no smoking signs and paved in dogends. They all lit up and me and the TA crammed into the tiny shelter too with no thought for our own passive smoking hazards!

The walls were Perspex. I took my board markers out of my pocket and carried of teaching the physics lesson.

“You don’t fu***** give up, do you?”

No, I don’t. One of my finest qualities. I got the whole group through their GCSEs with passes.

Now, you might be getting the impression that there are no consequences to bad behaviour in PRUs. That’s not the case! There are sanctions, there are various punishments though, as I think I have already mentioned, rarely an isolation room. There are more often reward schemes for good behaviour. This particular PRU was offering students the chance to win an iPad. I asked the Head about this. How could the provision afford such generous prizes? She told me it would come out of her own pocket. Wow, I said. “They need to accrue 500 behaviour points; the leading student has 7. I think my money is safe,” She replied. Oh, the cynicism! I started being a little freer with the behaviour points after that!

I challenged a lad on his behaviour. He consistently used the worst kinds of racist and misogynist language. Bizarrely he was also the only student in the whole PRU who turned into school in full uniform every day. My main task was to try and persuade him away from such offensive language and behaviour. As such I sanctioned him. He spun around and thrust his face towards mine, snarling,

“You can’t do that; my dad knows Matt Hancock!”