Zara Todd: An Ally

Transcript

My general feeling by this point, that I got to this point in my education al career is that I had come to the conclusion that most SENCOs, Special Educational Needs Coordinators, and most support workers and in fact most authority figures within education were completely clueless and therefore whether I chose to listen or not was completely up to my own will and whether I thought it was a good idea or not. Thankfully this view was sort of supported by, I was very lucky there was a lady in my local authority who was assigned my case from a very young age,from maybe eight or nine. So she started working with me in the horrendous middle school and she basically had utter contempt for all of the schools that I went to and not so overtly expressed her contempt for how I was treated and handled within the schools, in my presence. So that I was aware that some of the stuff that I was experiencing from a school point of view,was not really acceptable. You did have an adult ally. How important was that? Essential, Because she advocated and lobbied on my behalf, particularly in meetings that I didn’t want to go into. But also she acted as kind of a point of reference. I knew that by having her there sporadically, I knew when I was fighting against stuff, because I didn’t like it or I didn’t think it was right, I knew that I wasn’t completely kind of making it up and it wasn’t just me being a stroppy teenager, there was some grounding in my reaction. So she was absolutely essential and she, I think without her, my experience of education would have been far less satisfying.

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