One of my favourite stories is when I went to visit a school in a very deprived area. This was before Oasis were managing the school. I walked into what really was one of the most frightening experiences of my life. There were literally kids fighting in front of me. I walked by the loo's and the doors where falling off the cubicles. There was human excrement on the bowls and the whole place was just falling apart. There was no discipline, there was massive absenteeism and it was only a 2% preferred choice of school by parents for that catchment area.
Anyway ABA get commissioned by Oasis, our client, to go in and do our stuff together with them and the leadership team. ‘Our Stuff’ is about educational change, leadership, curriculum and of course investing a substantial amount of money into refurbishing parts of the school.
Months pass – a lot of work, and then you go back to an open day. And you see the difference. It is so staggering. It is unbelievable. There’s a sense of discipline, of order, of joy, of empowerment, of creativity.
It’s just phenomenal and I will never forget this one little girl, she was fabulous, a West Indian girl who’d written a poem. It was called ‘The Circle of Inclusion’, which is the Oasis symbol and she ended up in this poem, eulogizing, about all that had happened to her and in the end she said "It’s all summed up in one thing, ‘The Circle of Inclusion’." At which point, I just about broke down because you suddenly realize that you created a symbol that the children are now using as a metaphor for a change in their life - and that symbol had helped them realize what change could be.
It was just a very profound moment, a very humbling moment.
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