Text of Guy Kingston’s speech to North Somerset Council on 18 November 2008

Sammy’s Story

Sammy was a very happy three year old. Throughout his short little life he had always been shy and sensitive. But his mum loved him and, despite the difficulties of being a single parent, took great care to build his confidence and help him make friends.

And, when he was three Sammy started pre-school. There he made many new friends and developed his social skills. He was a kind child, happy to share his sweets and, more often than not, his toys.

His confidence grew and his pre-school teacher thought he was coming along very well.

But ... then ... Sammy’s life changed, and changed for the worse. By a quirk of the primary school place allocation system he was sent to a school far away. The other pre-school kids all got a local place, but not poor Sammy.

Instead, at just the age of four, he was put on a bus and taken to school five miles away.

When he asked him mum why he couldn’t go to school with his friends all she could say was that the man in charge had said no. Poor Sammy, he couldn’t understand. He couldn’t understand what he’d done to be punished this way.

Poor Sammy was tortured by these bus journeys. There was no supervision, his mum couldn’t come with him and as the youngest, and being naturally shy, Sammy became an object of amusement for the older children.

Not that the older kids saw themselves as bullies – children don’t understand how cruel they can be – but bullying was exactly what happened.

It started with them pushing Sammy’s toy car along the floor of the bus and under other seats, then they always made him sit in a different place to the one he’d chosen ... taking his bag and throwing it around the bus. And when Sammy cried they laughed and teased him even more. Poor Sammy, he had nowhere to hide.

Powerless and helpless, Sammy’s mum was desperate to find a way out of this predicament but they were hard up enough as it was and she just couldn’t afford, for Sammy’s sake, to lose her job and take him to school herself.

And, when Sammy told his mum of the nasty things that happened she just cried – what else could she do? Seeing his mum cry made Sammy even sadder so he, in his little boy’s way, decided to try to make his mum happy and never told her again of the nasty things that happened.

The teachers at his new school just saw a quiet and withdrawn boy, a boy who sat by himself at lunchtime and in the playground.

The teachers, you see, didn’t know what Sammy had been like before he’d started big school and just thought he’d always been this way. For his part Sammy didn’t tell them what was happening because he didn’t want them to cry like his mummy had.

Sammy’s life spiralled downhill. After such a good start his social skills went into reverse. He became an anxious and nervous child and because, as a four year old, he didn’t know how to deal with his feelings he soon developed behavioural problems. Rather than receive the sympathy, compassion and understanding he so desperately needed Sammy was ostracised by his peers and barely tolerated by his teachers.

Needless to say, as he grew older, Sammy failed at school and soon got into trouble with the authorities.

Sammy is a sort of every child. Sammy is a typical kid from Long Ashton – a victim of mistakes made before he was born, but even more a victim of a heartless, dehumanised system that somehow just couldn’t bring itself to right those earlier wrongs.

A system that couldn’t bring itself to spend as little as £8.50 per child per week to put in a temporary classroom at one of Long Ashton’s primary schools so Sammy, and the 25 other children just like him, could go to school with their friends.

Ladies and gentleman of the council, Sammy’s story may be fiction but it is very real. The three year olds of Long Ashton today, who will be the Sammy’s of tomorrow, need an advocate, and on their behalf I implore you to take some very simple, easy and, above all, highly cost effective measures so their little lives don’t turn out like Sammy’s.

Thank you for your time and thank you for listening.