Boxing Clever Boxing Clever How one alternative-provision school for excluded teenagers used traditional teaching, personal relationships and sport to fight gangs, unhappiness and educational failure in a battle for the future of its pupils. Tom Ogg Foreword by Lord Glasman Civitas: Institute for the Study of Civil Society London First Published September 2012 © Civitas 2012 55 Tufton Street London SW1P 3QL email: [email protected] All rights reserved ISBN 978-1-906837-43-3 Independence: Civitas: Institute for the Study of Civil Society is a registered educational charity (No. 1085494) and a company limited by guarantee (No. 04023541). Civitas is financed from a variety of private sources to avoid over-reliance on any single or small group of donors. All publications are independently refereed. All the Institute’s publications seek to further its objective of promoting the advancement of learning. The views expressed are those of the authors, not of the Institute. Typeset by Civitas Printed in Great Britain by Berforts Group Ltd, Stevenage SG1 2BH Contents Page Author vi Acknowledgements viii Foreword Lord Glasman xi 1: Boxing and Exclusion 1 2: We’ll Always Have Devon 10 3: A Bit of Background 37 4: Teaching the Unteachable? 52 5: The Boxing Gym 85 6: An Inspirational Individual 119 7: The Classroom and the Street 157 8: Boxing Clever 189 Postscript 206 Notes 208 v Author Tom Ogg grew up in South London, where he attended a local comprehensive school before joining the sixth form of Graveney School in Tooting. He read philosophy, politics and economics (PPE) at Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford, before completing a MSc in sociology at Nuffield College, University of Oxford. Tom joined the staff of the social-policy think-tank Civitas in 2007, for whom he worked on the London Boxing Academy Community Project until 2010. He has since taught for Civitas on their Civitas Schools programme and at Footsteps Football Academy. He is also a governor of the East London Science School, a Free School due to open in September 2013. Tom is now a pupil barrister at a leading commercial set of chambers in the Temple, London. Whilst training to be a barrister, Tom set up the City/4-5 School Exclusions Project (www.city.ac.uk/schoolexclusions), which provides representation to pupils who are appealing against their permanent exclusion from mainstream schools. He was also part of the miscarriage of justice campaign for Sam Hallam (www.samhallam.com), who was released from prison in 2012 following the quashing of his conviction for murder by the Court of Appeal. vi In memory of Kemar Duhaney 1991 – 2012 Acknowledgements There are a number of people to whom I owe my thanks. I would first like to thank all of the students whom I taught at the LBACP: thank you for being so stimulating, challenging and entertaining. Thank you to everyone I worked with at the LBACP. The most important figure in my narrative is Chris Hall, for reasons that will become apparent to the reader, but I would like to acknowledge the important contribution made to the project by Simon Marcus, without whose involvement it wouldn’t have happened in the way and at the time it did. It was Simon who first made contact with Civitas, which led to my involvement, and who was able to raise the profile of the work in public policy circles. This was an important element in the development of LBACP. Thanks to my other LBACP colleagues Peter Haymer, Richard Ross, Caroline Jarrett, Ervis Jegeni, Terri Kelly, Carmel Cadden, Angie Despong, Frank Brinkley, Rachel DeJong, Daniel Sandle-Brownlie, Danny Coklie, Anna Cain, Paulo Muphungo, James Woodward, Eric Ochieng, Michael Grant and John Beckles; and to my Civitas colleagues Will Hodson and Pete Quentin. Thank you also to all the volunteers who helped at the LBACP, who include Richard Abraham, David Sooby, Ganan Sritharan, Jonathan Broad, Lorna Price, Emily Kaill, Beth Haines, Tsz San So, Claire Mullarkey, Aylete Fpiro and John Graham. Special thanks to Jan and Laurie Whelan who gave their time to work with a special student. The assistance that Civitas provided for the work of the LBACP was made possible by the generous response to appeals which were made to Civitas supporters. Thanks are also due to the Tom ap Rhys Pryce Trust; Sir Stephen Waley-Cohen for his generosity in helping our students to go to the theatre courtesy of Mousetrap Theatre Projects; and Lord Feldman for funding our trips to Parliament, amongst many other trips. I would also like to thank the following people: Harriet Pickering of the London Russian Ballet School for being so keen to spread the joy of ballet; both the Oxford University Amateur Boxing Club (Richard Pickering in particular) and Corpus Christi College Boat Club (Gregor Jotzu in particular) for giving us viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS great work-outs; the Oxford Union for hosting the former mentioned work-out; Corpus Christi and St John’s Colleges at Oxford University for receiving us on trips; Maria Allen for organising our trip to Parliament; Dwayne Chambers, Jim Pope and Jesse Armstrong for taking the time out to visit us; PGL camps and Atholl Adventures for hosting us in Devon and Scotland respectively; the Bank of England and its Governor Mervyn King; OnlyConnect; and the Tottenham Community Sports Centre, and particularly Malcolm Springthorpe, for hosting us. I would like to thank all those who have kindly read chapters of the book, or served as a sounding board for my ideas. Thank you to Harry Ogg, Richard Abraham, Charlynne Pullen, Eleanor Rogerson, Anastasia de Waal, James Easy, Brandon Terry, Richard Kidd, Polly Hunt, Rowenna Davis, Kiri Crequer, Alex Sutherland, Lee Jones, George Hoare, Andrew Flint, Helen Cowen, Zenobe Reade, Rob Howsam, Juliet Grames, David Sooby, Nick Cowen, Carl Parsons, Sue Tallon, Samuel Gartland, and Vidya Kumar. Thank you also to the Institute of Ideas Education Forum for hosting a discussion about the LBACP in mid-2010. Particular thanks are due to Gemma Glyn, James Woodward, and Mike Rivers-Bowerman for their detailed comments. I am also grateful to those who participated in the anonymous refereeing process for their helpful comments. Special thanks are due to Rob Howsam and Purpose for designing the cover. My greatest thanks must go to the following people. To my parents, without whom none of this would have been possible. To David Green, the director of Civitas, whose vision and wise steering of the project were crucial, and who I think should receive credit for plunging his think-tank into the messy business that is the sharp end of education in the UK. As will become clear, this book is in large part a tribute to the work and achievements of Chris Hall, without whom this book would not have been written. It was Chris’s idea to turn his boxing gym into a school, and I am just one among of thousands who are grateful to him for doing so. I owe my thanks to him also. Finally, the person to whom this book and my work in Tottenham owes most is Robert Whelan. Robert guided me through ix BOXING CLEVER my time at the LBACP and has done since. It was at his suggestion that I first began keeping the diaries that form the basis for the book, and not only did he edit it, he shepherded me through the entire process. It was Robert’s belief in and commitment to the project that kept the show on the road at the most rocky of moments. I owe Robert a great deal. Thank you, Robert. Tom Ogg London, August 2012 x Foreword There are several reasons why I feel honoured to write this foreword. The first is the great respect I have for David Green, the director of Civitas. He has been concerned for a lifetime with the everyday virtues of how ordinary people support and protect each other and preserve their sense of humanity. He is a rare thing in the contemp- orary political scene, an intelligent man fearlessly committed to the good. This permeates the work that Civitas does, a prime example of which is Tom Ogg’s Boxing Clever. The second is that it is set in ‘my’ London, on a straight line north of the City up the A10. Dalston, Tottenham and Edmonton are the areas the students come from and I have seen these places transformed by immigration, manufacturing decline and tech- nological change in my lifetime. I live in Hackney and have a strong commitment to the good of these places. This is intensified by the fact that the London Boxing Academy is in Tottenham, the home of the football team I have supported for as long as I can remember. Every visit to White Hart Lane, mysteriously located on Tottenham High Street, has a childhood sense of wonder with something of the pilgrimage about it. At least when I arrive. After watching the match, a related emotion of heartbroken disenchantment can gain the upper hand. The intensity of my reaction when Spurs announced that they wished to move to Stratford is still something that surprises me and gives an insight into the raw grief that a sense of powerless dispossession can generate. In my mind, the destinies of the club and of the place are inextricably linked, and this book gives a unique insight into its reality. The third is a long-standing interest in boxing. Boxing is a demanding vocation. It requires dedication and speed, skill and strength. It is extreme in its virtues and vices, combining violence and intelligence, greed and self-sacrifice, glory and humiliation, risk and reward.