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08/23/2010 Headteacher Charlie Taylor's unconventional approach pays off

Mary O'Hara meets a straight-talking head who has used massage, tea and toast to change his pupils' lives

The first time I met Charlie Taylor, the straight-talking headmaster of the Willows school, a north London primary for children with severe behavioural problems, was in the autumn of 1988 at university. Despite striking differences in our backgrounds (Taylor was every inch the self-assured public school boy who slotted right in at Cambridge, while I hailed from an inner-city comprehensive in Belfast) we became good friends. He planned to go into teaching, but I assumed he would do what others from his background eventually do (he was a contemporary of David Cameron at Eton) and gravitate towards politics, the City or some other money-laced profession.

Fast forward two decades (we lost touch about 15 years ago) and he's a lauded headteacher, a consultant who has taught in and advised some of London's toughest schools, and latterly the author of two books to help parents navigate unruly behaviour, the latest of which, Divas and Door Slammers, focuses on how to deal with teenagers.

"I got into teaching â€" reluctantly â€" and then found I was interested in children who were naughty," he explains, putting his career history in context. "I got my first job in an inner-city secondary school [dealing] with all the rogues. It was a shit hole." One job led to another and, thanks mainly to a burgeoning interest in behavioural issues, Taylor began consulting for local education authorities and doing private freelance coaching with parents and children when bad behaviour was proving intractable. By 2005, he "got bored" and was ready for something new. Taylor was already working on his first book when he came across a vacancy for a head's position at the Willows. "I had no credentials, but I thought, 'fuck it, I'll just go for it'. I hadn't been a deputy head or anything like that, but I had a reasonably good reputation in the borough so I went and was interviewed. I've been there for the last five years."

He may not have been entirely qualified to run a school, but within 18 months the Willows had achieved its first outstanding rating from Ofsted, in part due to his unconventional approach. Describing the scale of the problem on arrival (the school had 36 children aged 11 and under who had been excluded by mainstream schools) he says: "Those first few months, it was like a war zone. I bought a £29.99 machine-washable suit, I got spat on so much". Most days staff had to physically restrain children who were aggressive. "Staff were getting injured and the children were getting injured. It was a complete zoo." Desperate times called for radical measures, so Taylor set about introducing a new regime. "For example, we brought in peer massage so that all the kids massage each other every day. The whole school has tea and toast every day. They stop at 10 o'clock in a very twee way and sit round a table with a china teapot."

He describes his approach as "very basic" and he focused on tackling rudimentary but fundamental gaps in the children's development, such as teaching them to welcome affection. The aim, he says, "is to put something in the tank", a reference to the fact that the majority of children arrive at the school with a host of developmental difficulties against a backdrop of "multi-generation" poverty and chaotic home lives. "[Then] they'll have something," he explains. "A little pocket of confidence and caring and love they'll be able to draw on. We have to do the cuddling bit, the family bit and also the playing bit. Some of them have got no idea how to play."

After making some "rookie" errors, mainly as he learned how to manage, the changes he implemented began to bear fruit. Taylor's experience both at the Willows and elsewhere has left him with an uncompromising view of the root of the problems he encounters. "It's poverty. I mean poverty in every sense of the word: poverty of expectations, poverty of emotions. It's the four horses of the apocalypse in terms of social deprivation."

In what turns out to be a sweeping (and disarmingly candid) interview, Taylor seamlessly segues from his own career and on to the gamut of what he regards as England's interwoven educational and social problems. He touches on everything from the failure of New Labour to address entrenched problems such as the minuscule number of youngsters on free school meals (one barometer for evaluating educational meritocracy) who get A* grades in exams, to the benefits system (he calls it "entrapping"), to why most parents could do with a bit of help adjusting to their children's adolescence.

Taylorbelieves mainstream schools aggravate problems for the most vulnerable youngsters, accusing New Labour of being "incredibly paranoid", afraid to take real risks and introduce reforms that could have improved the performance of kids at the lower end of the social scale. He also rails against politicians in general for an "obsession" with testing and league tables. The introduction of more tests and greater scrutiny weren't of themselves bad things, he suggests. "When I first started teaching, it was so sloppy and slack. Children just weren't being taught anything. It had to change." Rather, he contends that league tables and tests have done nothing to make the system fairer. As for those children least likely to perform well? They are all too often neglected by schools, he says. "I was in one school and the deputy head said, pointing at the lower achievers: 'that's the bunch. Forget that lot down there'. It's a very common [attitude]."

Finding the X factor

While the young children at his school tend to be the most difficult cases, "they've always got an X factor", Taylor says. In an echo of the Conservatives' Centre for Social Justice analyses, he regards their plight as an intrinsic consequence of social breakdown and a malfunctioning welfare system that discourages people from finding work. "It is easy for me to say. Of course it is. But I'm not insensitive. I see the damage. The [number of] long-term jobless hasn't even wavered on the dial." Blair putting "a lot of money in to Sure Start and stuff like that" helped some, but, he adds: "there was a glass bottom that they couldn't get through and there was a benefit-dependent underclass that it didn't trickle down to."

So what would he do to change things? Taylor asserts that "the ideology bit" gets in the way of debate on education, but says he likes the idea of implementing a quota system requiring schools to allocate a proportion of places to children on free school meals as a way of mitigating against middle-class parents colonising the best state schools.

Like the prime minister, David Cameron, Taylor has a confounding capacity for melding ideas from the left and right of the political spectrum â€" he advocates "pouring resources" into pregnant teenagers to improve their life chances rather than vilifying them, while adding that state schools could learn a lot from public schools. "That's another incredibly political thing [to say]. Public schools are unbelievably successful. Why wouldn't you want to emulate them?"

Taylor knows that speaking his mind on what's wrong with state education will bring accusations of hubris. So would he be tempted to cash in some of his public-school privileges and move into something more lucrative or into politics? I am what I am now. I've made my bed. Who knows where I'll end up?"

Charlie Taylor: CV

Age 45

Work Headteacher of the Willows school

Before that Behaviour support teacher, freelance behaviour consultant and writer

Likes walking, fishing, cooking, pub theatre

Married with three children

• Charlie Taylor's latest book, Divas and Door Slammers, is published by Vermillion

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