The London school using i to explore the world
The IndependentThe best of Voices delivered to your inbox every week - from controversial columns to expert analysis Sign up for our free weekly Voices newsletter for expert opinion and columns Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy If you went to a school where 45 per cent of the pupils do not speak English as a first language at home; where 50 pupils a year enter Year 7 without speaking any English at all; whose student body speaks up to 70 different language and where pupils come from pretty much any war zone that you read about in i – from Aghanistan to Somalia – you might have a different view of the news from people who did not come from one of the poorest areas of London. The 1,500-pupil Woolwich Polytechnic School has gone from "good" to "good with outstanding elements" to "outstanding" within three Ofsted reports. On our "tour"', i's head of marketing Ciara Battigan and I visited a Year 9 class to see all 28 of them studying i during a reading class – all except a couple of boys reading books, and one who was reading The Sun, that is. As the day went on Mr Parker would whisper to me "that boy's got Tourette's" or "he's not heard from his family since the Kabul bombing yesterday", or how yet another pupil was actually a stowaway refugee from Afghanistan.
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