Going in by the front door

The pattern of Searle’s later teaching career and continuing development of a child-centred, working-class pedagogy, or critical literacy, proved even more controversial than at Sir John Cass school. He was appointed to the head-ship of the 80 per cent non-white Earl Marshal comprehensive in Sheffield in 1990, a year before the first Gulf war. But his refusal to exclude pupils, his determined attempt to involve the local communities, Yemeni, Pakistani, white working-class, etc., in the life of the school and his encouragement of pupils to confront the issues raised by the war — which affected many of them directly — and his bending of the National Curriculum to these ends earned him the wrath not only of the more conservative elements on the local education authority but of shadow Labour education secretary and Sheffield MP, David Blunkett. Attempts made to close Earl Marshal were successfully resisted; Searle was fired, but not before the publication of a number of collections of pupils’ writings, including Lives of Love and Hope, by female pupils and based on family experiences.