The first visit

My first visit to Monteagle school was at the tail end of the summer holiday before filming was due to start. I took a detour en route to visit the house in Dagenham where my Mum spent the earlier part of her childhood. Monteagle as it turned out was five minutes away from my Mum's old house.

Monteagle school is a lovely little sanctuary in the middle of a somewhat dog-eared estate. The school is smart, well-kept, spacious and (ideal for the camera) flooded with light – Gary the site-manager (caretaker we used to call them) makes sure it stays that way. Monteagle isn't just Gary's job, it's his life. He and his wife live in a neat, modest house on site and Gary is also a school Governor; he's just one of many staff at Monteagle who are totally committed to improving the school and the "life chances" of its pupils – to steal one of Headteacher Lynna Thompson's catchphrases.

About Lynna Thompson

I met Lynna on that same day. She is a mightily impressive woman; she takes no prisoners, she tolerates no excuses, her mission is to pull Monteagle up the school league tables by it's bootstraps and it's an attitude she's applied to her own life.

Lynna is supported by her Deputy Mark Austin; the two of them are a tight double-act and a force to be reckoned with. But what really comes across is their utter passion for their pupils in trying to create an environment that focuses on getting the best out of the kids, and instilling in them a sense of community about their school.

The second visit

My second visit to the school was at the very start of term in September. The one thing that really strikes you when you spend time at Monteagle is the general good behaviour, especially since some of the kids don't necessarily have those kind of boundaries imposed at home. It's a safe space for the children; for those who have difficult home lives, for the kids who are refugees or from immigrant families and have landed in Dagenham often without being able to speak English.

The adults in the area might have issues or tensions around immigration and multi-culturalism but Monteagle is an amazing microcosm of effortless, harmonious multi-culturalism. Little kids can be pretty cool when it comes to being indifferent to difference.

At Monteagle there are some amazing teachers and some fantastic parents too. It's a community and to help a community grow and move in the right direction you have to invest in it. One mother said something that really stuck with me; if your local school is failing, you don't move house or go on a half hour journey every day to get to the best school in the area, you get involved, you join the PTA, the Board of Governors, you support the school, you support the teachers and the school gets better. What a truism in these times of parents competing and faking utility bills to get their kids into the best school possible.

Amazing progress

Watching the children change and develop over the course of the year was a privilege. It was a monumental feat of management to get the reading scheme up and running, but Lynna and Mark were not prepared to let it fail. They believed the scheme would ultimately work for their kids and (from my experience behind the camera witnessing it) they were right. I'm no educationalist but I certainly saw transformations in many children. The repetition of sounds might appear relentless and dull but bizarrely most children found it fun – like a game. And for kids who'd previously only experienced letters on a page as mysterious hieroglyphics, the scheme helped them gain confidence. You could see them finally start to grasp that the sounds of letters blended together made words – a real eureka moment.

I saw a 7 year old Turkish/Kurdish girl who was withdrawn and sad and didn't speak a word of English at the beginning of the year, flourish. When I visited the school last week she ran over and started chatting away in English, something that she was incapable of a year ago.

I saw 'bad lads' headed for the scrapheap of illiteracy, who'd already decided that education wasn't for them, start to grow and improve their behaviour in school because finally it was all starting to make sense. For the most struggling readers the 10 minutes additional daily 1-2-1 tuition was critical; they thrived under this kind of attention.

After the best part of a year spent on my knees shooting at kiddie-height, I only hope the series does the school, it's staff and it's pupils justice and that somewhere in the three one-hour programmes we've managed to convey what amazing work happens on a daily basis in this remarkable place.

Written by Suzanne Lynch, Director/Camera, Last Chance Kids

The Monteagle Project | The Challenges | A Week in the Life of the Programme… | Benjamin Zephaniah | Monteagle Primary School Poem | Shane's Poem | Why We Did It | What Monteagle Did and What It Cost | The Testing of Reading Ability at Monteagle Primary School

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