Oasis group founder Steve Chalke says the current situation at the Oasis Academy on Sheppey is heartbreaking

https://www.kentonline.co.uk/sheerness/news/this-has-been-the-hardest-school-to-run-297821/

Transcript

00:00 Firstly, it's tragic, isn't it?

00:01 It's, and so I'm, you know, it really is heartbreaking.

00:06 It's heartbreaking for me personally,

00:08 because I know that it's exactly

00:11 what these children don't need.

00:13 Secondly, I understand that every staff member

00:19 in every school across the country

00:21 should be in a position where they feel safe.

00:23 So for those two reasons,

00:26 it's a really sad turn of events.

00:30 I'm shocked and not surprised, which I need to explain.

00:35 Firstly, it's worth saying that there are 248 staff

00:40 in the school and the majority of them

00:42 aren't part of the NEU.

00:44 So the majority of the staff aren't on strike

00:47 because of this.

00:48 And I think that sometimes gets lost

00:50 when in the shorthand, the media says

00:53 the staff are striking.

00:54 The truth is some of the staff

00:56 from a particular union are.

00:58 But that's still a serious thing

01:01 and has an impact on the school.

01:03 So when I say I'm shocked by a child's behavior

01:06 towards a staff member in that way, I really am shocked.

01:09 When I say I'm not surprised,

01:12 when OASIS came to take on the academy,

01:15 as you probably know, in 2014,

01:18 when we took it over from Dulwich College,

01:21 who'd run the academy and built the academy

01:23 and run it for the first years,

01:25 they'd been unable to contain any of these issues,

01:28 which existed then, that's the whole point.

01:31 And the government asked OASIS to step in

01:35 because the academy was failing

01:39 and all of this kind of behavior was evident then.

01:42 And of course, had been before,

01:44 even before an academy was ever conceived,

01:47 go stretching back decades,

01:49 as some of the media has picked up on.

01:52 This is a generational problem.