When Asima Ravat walked through the gates of Birmingham’s Oasis Academy Foundry for her first day in 2014, the playground was in a state of commotion. Reporters were gathered round the school doors, staff were trying to work out why they were there, and there were no pupils in sight.
Ravat’s arrival had coincided with the airing of Channel 4’s controversial Benefits Street documentary. The idea behind the programme was simple: to portray what life was like on James Turner Street, where supposedly 90 per cent of residents lived off benefits. Ravat’s new school sat on the corner of this street – a stone’s throw from the wire barbs and sentry towers of Winson Green Prison.
“The parents were really scared because they had complete exposure of their private life on that programme,” Ravat, now principal, tells The House 10 years-on, reflecting on the chaos from the calm of Foundry’s staff room. “Sadly, it was quite damaging for them; their children were all exposed in it.”
Oasis Community Learning, a multi-academy trust, had inherited the school from the local authority, which had been on the brink of closing it. Back then, a large number of pupils were on child protection plans. Social services and local police were a constant presence in their lives. The Victorian building around them was falling apart, and there was no curriculum in place.
