‘Park House School in Grimsby has turned our lives around’

On a nearby cooking hob, Brogan is making a chicken curry. He wants to join the Army and is now looking forward to taking his GCSEs.

“I was just getting excluded and that’s how I’ve come here. I was fighting too much, and in class I was having flip-outs,” he says.

“It’s a big change for me. I just want to do my work when I’m in class now.”

Students are surprisingly open about why they were excluded from their original schools, but most have a similar story about why they are now getting their lives back on track.

“I was never in any of my lessons and then I started to fall behind a bit, and then when I was in, I didn’t know what was going on, so I just thought ‘I’ll sack that off’,” adds Katelyn, another of the students.

“I didn’t like the way teachers spoke to kids, and so I used to always just scream back, kick off, or when a teacher was telling another student off, I would get involved,” explains Talisha, 15.

“There are so many students in mainstream schools, it’s hard for them to keep an eye on just one of them, and they don’t really notice until they are too deep in.”