It was April last year that the former headmistress of Starcross School, an Islington social worker for the local area services team, and the senior local education psychologist, putting their heads together as to what they could do about persistent truancy, came up with the idea of the open class.
It seemed to them that if they could persuade about a dozen of the habitual truants who all know one another because they live in the same housing block, to attend an experimental class, this might encourage other absentees to follow their example. It was not as if the conventional remedies for truancy had been neglected: letters, house visits from education welfare officers, prosecution - but in many cases these had no effect whatever.
In July they appointed Fiona Green to run the class. Mrs Green, who is 31 and has had 10 years in teaching, herself attended no fewer than 12 schools - not because she, too was an awkward pupil, but through having lived as a girl in India and Australia as well as England. Of her English schools she feels she owes most to Dartington Hall and the Bath Academy School of Art at Corsham.
As a teacher she has worked at five schools - infant, junior, secondary, and with mixed ability, single sex and coeducational classes. Her most exotic job was at the Russian Embassy school, where she taught English for 18 months to the orderly offspring of the diplomatic corps. She is also a member of the A. S. Neill Trust.
Before her appointment to the open class Mrs Green had taught at Copenhagen infants’ school, which feeds Starcross comprehensive; and so knew some of the younger sisters and brothers of her future pupils. For this she was asked to recruit about a dozen habitual truants aged between 12 and 16.
She began with eight names on the list of those living in the nearby housing estate of York Way Court.

She visited the estate to see the idea of the open class to the girls and their parents . . . when she could find either, for the girls were often adrift and the fathers and mothers out at work. She told them there would be a class specially for them at York Way School, and when they asked her what would go on there she said the class would be whatever they made of it themselves.
After five weeks of this preliminary recruitment - or wary battle of wits and interests between the girls, their parents, and their young teacher - and after all had been to Fiona’s home to meet her two children, since they had allowed her to come into theirs - the class got off to highly speculative start last October. On the part of the girls, there had been an absolute determination to vanish again if they found themselves coerced or even bored, but willingness to attend with increasing regularity if they found they liked the place, and could have a say in what was taught them.
On the teachers’ part - for Mrs Green now had one assistant (“Angela, my Rock of Gibraltar“) and several part-timers - the purpose was to show the kids that truancy, too, could be a bore, and to try to entice them from an initial interest in just being there, as if the class were a sort of club, into wanting to learn more because of an aroused and genuine interest.
In addition to the teething troubles of any novel enterprise, there were misunderstandings, tantrums, and even violence ; but decreasingly so, as the girls have begun to identify with “their“ class. The educational powers-that-be at County Hall, initially dubious, have come to give firm support, as have the welfare and medical visitors and the two headmistresses of Starcross School. As to the girls’ parents, their attitude varies from one of intense - sometimes excessive - involvement with the class, to neutrality or complete indifference.
Since next to home, and their own peer group, school is the chief formative influence on a child, Mrs Green has tried to establish a relationship with the girls based, certainly, on some dependence on their part upon the teachers, but in which the staff shall not he unduly dependent on the girls.
The trouble in many of their homes, she thinks. that not only are the girls dependent on their parents but some of the parents depend excessively on their children’s constant presence : as domestic helpers, objects of emotional outlet, and even simply as creatures that are always there. Indeed, this parental possessiveness may be one cause of truancy and to give the girls an alternative place to be throughout the day, may help to relieve them from this obsession.
What the children “do” at the class cannot be seen simply in terms of their curriculum, since a social and psychological effort is being made to help them, as well as one strictly educational. A fairly typical day begins with a meeting of staff and whatever girls have appeared, at which problems at school and at home are discussed with candour.
Classes, in effect voluntary, then take place in arts, physical training, cooking, typing, sewing and, for those who want it, there are more formal English lessons. Visiting teachers instruct in make-up, acting, video techniques, and swimming, and lecturers from such bodies as the National Council for Civil Liberties or Women’s Lib may say their pieces if they can find a hearing.
Classes are on four days only, as Mondays are devoted by the staff to seeing parents, social workers, psychologists and so on, and to writing the inevitable reports.

Nevertheless, girls often turn up on Mondays, and Fridays, the favourite day in schools for occasional truancy, are surprisingly well attended. Excursions for as long as a week, and as far a field as Yorkshire and Wales, have been organized in conjunction with local schools, whose groups have in turn visited York Way.
Teachers. in conventional classes pray at the thought of a teacher-pupil ratio of about 1 : 4  but while admitting the advantages of this, Mrs Green points out that it also involves a far more demanding, and hence exhausting, attitude on the teachers’ part. If there is the relief from the pressure of examinations, there is also the perhaps more difficult task of persuading the girls to examine their own attitudes and achievements. But in fact, the open class has not encountered much envy from more formal classes neither from their teachers nor even, unexpectedly, from their girls, of whom none seem to be so enticed by the notion of an open class as to want to become habitual truants themselves.
There are controversial points : since the class caters only for a relatively small number of habitual truants, should it be expanded to hold far more? If so, Mrs Green feels, the newcomers should be grouped into another, separate class, since 12-16 seems about the maximum number in which, with such girls, a productive group spirit can be engendered.
Should girls in the special class be encouraged to return, in due course, to conventional classes? Here she feels the achievement is so precariously dependent on the very nature of the group, that the prospect of such a return , other than part time, might lead to a lapse into total truancy; the more so, as most of the girls are nearing school leaving age’ anyway.
Before I left the class I was offered bangers, mash and peas cooked by the girls in their kitchen which, like all the rooms, they have decorated themselves. (There were volunteers enough for cooking, but there were none for washing-up: a perennial problem for which the open class has not yet found a solution!) Susan was still on about her teeth, and was demanding an escort of no less than four fellow pupils to confront the dreaded dentist. While the dishes clattered, and the radio blared, a trip to Southend was being discussed, as well as the iniquity of the law which forbids girls under 18 being tattooed.
Visitors are largely ‘ignored after being examined candidly both as a physical object and as one who, they guess, has come to look them over as spectators do the Giant Panda or sonic other star curiosity. They are already used to social and educational enquirers of all categories coming to visit the school.
It is easy for a casual visitor to be sentimental and over-impressed by such an encounter, yet I must say I found the girls sympathetic, fearless, stalwart and even beautiful, however mixed-up and anti-social. True, they looked at you in such a way that you were not sure whether they wanted to embrace you or claw your eyes out, yet when I left, their farewells were briskly courteous and tender. Doubtless a second visit would be quite another matter!
All the same, I could not help remembering the Bible story, and feeling that the prodigal daughters need and deserve the favoured treatment that they are getting.

Times Educational Supplement
2.8.74

Margaret: "Teachers often forget they were once kids too - they seem to think everyone wants to learn all the time the things they think you should learn.”
Josie: "When I first came here I was made welcome. You’ve got to act big to be noticed at Starcross; there’s too many people there.”
Tina: "I never row with my mum now - I'm happier than before."
Elaine: "The meetings are good, you say what you want to say - get it out of your system.”
Lynn: "You don’t have to do the same things at the same time each week. Here you can do typing or cooking for as long as you want and when you want to.”