Introduction

At the end of May 2022, after 21 years and 5 months, I left my council job, providing support for education settings in developing practice in the areas of PSHE (Personal, Social and Health Education), anti-bullying and equality. In that time, I had 7 different workplaces (including 2 home-offices), 7 managers, a range of team names, job titles, responsibilities and projects. It was an absolute privilege to do this work with amazing and committed schools, colleagues, individuals and organisations.

I joined the large, highly skilled, successful and innovative PSE Advisory Team as a secondary adviser for sex education working across Brighton & Hove and East Sussex in 2001. The team provided support for sex and drug education and were developing resources to support understanding of same sex relationships, cultural diversity and developing small group work programmes to prevent teenage pregnancies and substance misuse. The team went on to recruit to roles in anti-bullying, equality, careers education, participation and deliver on national programmes such as Healthy Schools, National PSHE CPD Programme, Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning (SEAL), secure a good reputation and win awards and national recognition. I was the last left standing of this team, but together and thanks to the schools and local and national partners we have worked with leave a legacy that includes expert seconded teachers supporting PSHE and anti-racism, an online schools’ survey, multiple guidance documents and resources including the Trans Inclusion Schools Toolkit, a five-year anti-racism strategy and schools in Brighton & Hove committed to developing the health and wellbeing of children in young people in increasingly challenging circumstances. The work continues with two advisers (when they recruit to my post), seconded teachers and commissioned consultants.

From the outset, the work of the team attracted the attention of local and national newspapers and on social media, and this continues to the present day.

This job gave me: friends, stress, joy, money, status and a raft of skills including how to train, present, have difficult conversations and manage strong emotions. It has given meaning and purpose to my life and has been my activism and a core aspect of my identity. I have learned a lot from colleagues, mentors, role models, parents, young people, community members and people with lived experience. I have been asked to share what I have learned from this time.

What is important to note is that actually much of what is written here relates to learning over the last five years in the role. At the age of 50, I was able to take a sabbatical and spent three months in Seville; where I learnt the most important lesson that I did not need my job to be me and to have purpose. Following the sabbatical, I had the privilege of being able to work part-time creating space to both cope with the demands of the job and to explore what it means to be in mid-life. It is also the time when I explored more deeply the White and other privilege I have, and I am grateful to those who challenged me and supported me at this time. This exploration will continue as I search for how I continue to live my values and purpose in a different way.

1. What I have learned about working in the education system

'Nothing about us without us' (phrase that came into use through disability activism)

I have always championed pupil, student and parent voice work (particularly with parents and carers of faith backgrounds in the case of relationships and sex education) and when it has been done well, noticed the difference it made to the quality of work – including providing powerful testimony for the need for improving equality and PSHE practice. However, this is an area of work that schools struggle to prioritise and make time for and I could have done more to model this effectively, and seek training for myself and to provide to settings to ensure it was done sensitively and appropriately. I have shame about times when I reported back the negative experiences of young people to their schools and no action was taken in response.

As we work to engage with groups to identify specific needs there is also the need to remember we all have multiple aspects to our identities and to not shy away from the complexity of intersectionality.

Facilitator, gate-keeper or tone-policer?

Partnership work has always been a core part of the work, the team saw themselves as understanding education settings, but not necessarily holding all the knowledge or expertise about particular health issues, protected groups or forms of prejudice. Finding partners, particularly those with lived experience was crucial to my professional development, but also to the sharing of this expertise with colleagues in education settings.  

My knowledge of and contacts in schools meant I could find ways to ‘sell’ and offer external, expert support from partners in the community, health, voluntary and other settings and helped ensure that schools did not feel overwhelmed by offers to them or expectations on them. I also worked to package offers to schools in language that was helpful or facilitated interest – by for example referencing the Ofsted Framework or safeguarding guidance.

In my career, I also made judgements about how prepared senior leaders or schools were to hear a certain message and I am sure that this at times – particularly in the case of anti-racist practice - was tone policing and silencing in ways that slowed down progress. It is a tricky balance to be had about bringing people along with you and ‘watering down’ what needs to be heard and said. I could have done more to challenge myself and ensure my judgments were not informed by my own prejudice and White privilege.

Connect with those that 'get it'

When it was difficult in my role, professionally or personally, actively reaching out to those who understood or were in a similar situation was invaluable. For example, I had peer conversations with a colleague who worked outside of education, but in equalities and so understood council systems and politics and about working with communities. She provided me with invaluable advice, but also a chance to talk around scenarios and ponder different options.

Over the last couple of years, I have also been part of a network of colleagues from other local authorities who have provided solidarity and much needed reassurance that I wasn’t alone. I have also been supported by colleagues in national and local charities, community members and last but not least friends. I think I could have reached out for help and support sooner and more often.

Schools and school staff are doing an incredible job in increasingly challenging circumstances

The education system is overwhelmed by national policy that does not centre wellbeing of either staff or children and young people nor does it provide sufficient resources to meet need whilst piling on attainment pressure. Therefore, believing in the positives of what schools and those in them are doing has been central to my work and I have witnessed inspirational commitment and hard work. But I could have spent more time identifying and building more methodically on the good practice and strengths in place.

However, schools are part of the wider society or system that also works against particular groups. The attainment gap, the disproportionate number of exclusions for students with SEND, the strip searching of disproportionate numbers of Black children (although the strip search of any child is evidence of a system failure), endemic sexual harassment of girls are just some of the evidence of systemic prejudice and failure. Mental health services are overwhelmed and have long waiting lists. There is a vital and urgent need to improve approaches to anti-bullying, equality and inclusion.

How to balance the urgent need for change with the pressure already on schools is an enormous challenge and requires an ability to sit with the discomfort that some or many children are being failed whilst continuing to plan for and support meaningful change. Given that racism, sexism and other forms of prejudice have a long history change is going to take time, but there is a need to maintain a constant focus on the vision that school should be a place where everyone feels welcomed, safe and loved. “Chipping away”, “lighting small fires” have been the mantras of my professional life along with noticing the small wins and having faith that sometimes a small step can make a big difference. There’s an intricate dance between this and not accepting the status quo.

You had my back but we all needed to understand better

In the council I worked for, the work we did in PSHE, anti-bullying and equality was valued and supported by councillors (across all parties), senior leaders, council lawyers and the media and communications team. Particularly, LGBT equality was supported because of the demographic of our city. This was welcomed and appreciated and meant that in the face of hard challenges I felt the work was valued and that senior leaders ‘had my back’. This support is and was vital for me and for the work.

However, we know that work in these areas of practice is complex and despite the support, I did feel that often I was the one holding the expertise to inform responses to complaints and challenges. I was often a lone voice championing one group or another. This was a huge pressure, sometimes exhausting, but also not good succession planning.

Whilst I understand that colleagues and managers have their own challenges, including lack of capacity, more investment and time could have been given to building confidence, scripts and approaches together so that a wider pool of people had the language to respond to complex issues. For example, it should have been the business of every team in Children’s Services (and wider) to understand the principles underpinning the trans toolkit and the anti-racist education strategy. 

Responding to backlash

These are my top tips learned from others and from experience for responding to challenge, criticism and false stories:

• Be brief - avoid the temptation to respond to each challenge or point made

• Respond with values, facts and links to further information centring the needs and wellbeing of children and young people

• Acknowledge what may be behind the challenge and or the emotions in it. “Thank you for your interest in X I can read that you feel strongly about…”. Identify any shared values if possible.

• Develop scripts and exemplars – in some cases, those making the challenges are engaging in deliberate attempts to take up time and capacity – a brief, set response can be adapted for challenges made in the same area of practice

• HOWEVER, consider spending more time in developing awareness and understanding through educational opportunities or longer responses for those who do want to understand more and are actually within educational communities

• Don’t take it personally (if possible). It helped me to remember that the challenges I was facing was not nearly as difficult for me as it was for a young person in school experiencing racism or transphobia for example

• Be respectful and don’t get drawn into personal or de-humanising comments in your responses (including in emails or discussions where you are with those that support your view)

• On social media block and or use similar principles as above

• Ensure someone else has read or sense checked the response – get support from media and communications teams if you have them, leave it 12 hours before sending

• Be humble, there is always more to learn and more to do to make the world a better place.

2. What I have learned about myself

My superpowers are also my kryptonite

I see myself, and perhaps others have too, as someone who knows what to do and gets things done.  This arrogant, organised, driven, clear thinking, action-focused part of me achieved a lot, and I have been proud of it. But this also got in the way of listening, curiosity, deep thinking and a willingness to sit in the mess and complexity to potentially build something that has even greater impact.

Another thing I have valued about myself is my ability to be self-reflective and I think this has probably mediated some of the above superpower, but this self-reflective part of me has also at times become a harsh inner critic such that it has damaged my wellbeing. Ironically, to want to always do better, be better, has got in the way of humility and listening and curiosity and perhaps therefore of doing better.

Self-care is work, not a bubble bath

Many or even most jobs are exhausting and stressful and this is not a call for pity or sympathy, I have been well-paid, and I have been lucky to do the work I have done. However, it has been and is tough working in the area of equality. Knowing that the work I did was needed because individuals were and are suffering, but the very nature of systemic prejudice and discrimination means that change is likely to be slow and include setbacks is hard. The work I did was also attacked (and deliberately misunderstood) in the media, this added to workload, was stressful and led to self-doubt and fears that I wasn’t doing my job well enough. In recent years, in the development of anti-racism work I have had to confront my own prejudice, privilege and many mistakes I have made in leading equality work.  

When work stopped being a form of self-care (it was for many years the thing that made me content, made me who I was) these are some of the things that helped and enabled me to continue with the work I loved and needed to pay the mortgage:

• Working in line with my values and strengths (and knowing what these were)

• Reducing my hours

• Yoga and working on listening to my body

• Believing in the words of Maya Angelou “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better” plus self-forgiveness

• Meditation

• Practicing gratitude

• Walking in nature

• Getting to know and accept the different parts of me with self-compassion

• Coaching and counselling

• Friends and connections and asking for help when I needed it (as above)

• Reading and podcasts

• Realising that there was never any ‘making it’, ‘finishing it’, ‘completing it’ or ‘getting it sussed’ and moving towards making peace with uncertainty, complexity and discomfort

• Avoiding self-care being another to do list!

What I have also learned is that I need to know myself, heal myself to contribute to healing the world AND I need to contribute to healing the world, in order to heal myself. One is not possible without the other. As I finish with this job, I wonder what my activism will look like.

What next?

When I worked for the council, it wasn’t uncommon to meet someone who would say ‘Oh you’re Sam Beal, I’ve heard about you from X…’. I was known, I had some status and I liked that. But now I am ready to leave this behind, this quote credited on the world wide web to Carl Jung resonates and sets my direction:

The first half of life is dedicated to forming a healthy ego, the second is going inward and letting go of it.

So, in the next part of my life, I am working on letting go of ego and exploring inwards, but very possibly to a similar end of being part of change.  I plan to use the coaching training and skills I have learned and practiced over recent years and develop my own coaching practice.

June 2022