As the telephone interrupts us for the umpteenth time, Gerry German says he had planned to keep busy in old age, but not like this. Luckily, after years of ill health, he has a fair spring in his step for a man of 82. No time to slow down, he says, laughing as the phone goes again. A cluttered boxroom in east London – but for him, the eye of the storm. One wonders how such an amiable, softly spoken figure, a white man with a ready smile and a soft Welsh lilt, can excite such strong emotions, but the electricity is generated by the work. Schools – reeling, they say, from disruptive pupils – take the nuclear option and jettison their "trouble- makers" with permanant exclusions. In step German and the Communities Empowerment Network to champion those discarded pupils against the system and, in quite a few cases, get them back in. He's king of the appeals. It doesn't make him popular. "I've quite a few informants in the schools and they tell me stuff. My favourite was the head who would theatrically throw himself to the floor on learning we had taken on a case. We took that as quite a compliment."
There are no winners in this – think 8,000 permanent exclusions a year in England; 380,000 fixed-term exclusions. And there is, says German, a cultural dimension. White, working-class pupils have serious problems in terms of underachievement, but black pupils remain three times more likely to be excluded than white, he says, and face stiffer sanctions. These cases bring him 90% of his workload: 60 referrals a month, through word of mouth. "For the most part, I think the problem is race," German tells me. "Unwitting racism: a combination of negative prejudice, destructive stereo-typing and low expectations. We go shoulder-to-shoulder with the parents. Generally, they are single mothers." An incongruous sight they are – the mothers, the children, and their genial elderly representative, who says he is rescuing the discarded from the scrapheap. "I always ask them if they will permit me to act on their behalf," German says. "I never presume. That's crucial. I say we are the only ones left to fight for you. From where we sit, it's the truth."
The Guardian
