Why Tom Hunt and Darren Day are helping Rushmere Hall school

Ipswich MP Tom Hunt and I have crossed the odd sword in the past but sometimes you just have to find out why the sword is being waved. 

He said to me, “I couldn’t tie my shoelaces until I was 14 and I couldn’t tie my own tie until I was in my 20s.” 

It wasn’t quite what I was expecting when we met for the first time after we’d had a bit of a spat. 

"Don’t worry about that," he said, immediately dismissing the reason we’d met up in the first place. "I was probably a bit stressed at the time. There are more important things to worry about." 

When we met for the second time at Rushmere Hall primary school in Lanark Road, Ipswich, last week I learned more about one of the biggest things that Mr Hunt worries about. The provision for special needs children in Ipswich.  

This isn’t a puff piece, with me bigging up some politician. I highly doubt Mr Hunt and I will ever vote the same way. But his passion for this vital issue is palpable and now I understand why. 

Tom Hunt found school difficult (Image: Archant)

"I was hopeless at school," he says. "I remember sitting there with my teacher saying, ‘Tom, you’ve just got to do better’ but I was looking around and not really that bothered. School was frustrating; it made made me feel I was thick." 

But Mr Hunt, by his own admission, was lucky. He formed a bond with a teacher, Mrs Clark, who "saw potential" in him.

His dyslexia and dyspraxia were diagnosed at 12 and his school put measures in place to support him. 

He was allowed to give up French, for example. "There didn’t seem much point in learning a new language when I was struggling to write in my own".

He was also given extra time in exams.  

There was a special needs room for reading and writing support too, though he "hated going in there, it was embarrassing," he says. 

This is why he is such an advocate for the work they do at Rushmere Hall under head teacher Paul Fykin, another force of nature I enjoyed meeting last week.

Paul Fykin - the force of nature headteacher at Rushmere Hall primary (Image: Paul Fykin)

There are two special needs units at Rushmere Hall, a long-standing unit for deaf children as well as a speech and language unit, but the children in both groups are very much part of the wider school.  

"All the children come to assemblies," says Mr Fykin, "so it is commonplace for them to see someone signing at the front.

"We mix things up in other ways too, so that children who might have difficulty with language but are great at PE, say, or art, will move into the mainstream class for those lessons.

"Accepting difference becomes normal.

"There might be a child on the autistic spectrum, for example, who needs to be in a quiet space over lunchtime and may find some situations challenging, but who the other children will know is brilliant with his facts so they will seek him out and say, ‘Ask him.’

"Everyone has their strengths and it’s our job to bring them out in the way that works best for each child.

"Our recent Autism Awareness Day enabled us to explore the range of talents our neuro diverse children have and be inspired by famous neurodiverse adults." 

Rushmere Hall primary has a very inclusive curriculum (Image: Rushmere Hall primary school)

None of this is easy. Before Mr Hunt arrived, Mr Fykin was telling me what a difference the MP's support had made to the school, advocating for them when there was pressure to close one of their units.

"The problem is funding," Mr Fykin explains. "There’s no other way of saying this but Suffolk children get less funding per child than many other counties. I’m not sure why." 

Mr Hunt doesn’t know either and it vexes him. "I don’t see why Suffolk children should get less," he says. "It’s such a battle, and it shouldn’t be." 

He is fighting it, nonetheless, conscious that he was fortunate to be independently educated.  

"SEND kids should be able to be put in any school into a system that guarantees success for every pupil," he says. "It’s my main mission."

It’s a noble mission certainly but not an easy one. Especially in Suffolk.  

According to Mr Fykin, London schools within the trust to which Rushmere Hall belongs get around double the funding per pupil. Norfolk and Essex, Mr Hunt adds, also get more than Suffolk children. Why? 

Mr Fykin isn’t one to moan however. "We work around it," he says. "We have to be creative.

"We have to think outside the box! But it’s tough.

"Because we have a good record with special needs, parents with those children want them to come here, but then it’s tricky to provide that level of support without adequate funding, it is also difficult because it is not an even playing field.

"Some schools have lots of pupils with additional needs and some have very few." 

The emphasis at Rushmere Hall is very much on the positive though.

When I arrived, star Darren Day was in the assembly hall, helping kids with their production of Joseph (apparently, he is a friend of a friend).

The production includes sign language to many of the songs taught by the school's BSL signers. 

Darren Day was at the school helping with their production of Joseph (Image: Rushmere Hall primary school)

"Seems you’re not the most famous person here," I said to Mr Hunt. 

He laughed. "I’m used to it. I was with Matt Hancock last week." 

Mr Hunt was previously on the education select committee so it was easier to have the right conversations on this subject, but he told me that whenever he gets in front of anyone from the Treasury it is the one thing he comes back to time and again.

He has also just been made Vice President of the Dyslexia Association - another position from which to advocate for children like the boy he once was. 

Both he and Mr Fykin believe more needs to be done in teacher training to prepare future teachers for the diversity of needs that children have. 

"It’s just not really included in the training," says Mr Fykin. "New teachers will think, that’s not something I deal with, but the reality is that they will have to, so they should be properly prepared for it.

"The progress of all children in their class is their responsibility and with budgets under constant pressure, managing a wide range of abilities and needs inside the primary classroom is going to become the norm."

Mr Fykin shares the MP's view that having a SEND condition has many positives.

Mr Hunt says his short-term memory is poor but he is great at remembering details. "I know the location of every polling station in every district in Ipswich," he says, "and I once met cricketer Mike Atherton at a function and knew more about his batting record than he did because I had memorised the Wisden guide of 1998. 

Organisation isn’t his strong point. "Not that my mother ever let me get away with it or use it as an excuse," he says. "She still says to me, ‘the state of your flat!’ But being neuro-diverse has many positive aspects. I see the bigger picture more.

"My brain works around a problem differently but that can be a good thing. If I could choose now not to have dyslexia or dyspraxia, I wouldn’t do it." 

He is certainly a good advert for what can be achieved.  

Tom still can't believe he got to Oxford after his difficult start at school

"It all clicked eventually," he says. "I went to the University of Manchester for my degree in politics and modern history and then did a post-grad at Oxford in Russian and Eastern European history.

"The year I was there I mostly walked around in disbelief. To think that I could get to study at Oxford after the way I’d started out." 

He is clearly a determined sort which is why we clash at times, but I’m glad he is brandishing this particular sword.

If anyone is going to hit the mark on this issue, I suspect it will be him.