Midway through last week, I had a long conversation with a man called Steven Wright, who lives in Suffolk. The previous day, I had spent a lot of time piecing through government documents and official statistics as I tried to make sense of the huge crisis engulfing some of the most crucial elements of England’s education system. But as usual, nothing came near the visceral impact of first-person testimony.
Wright is a widower, and the adoptive father of two teenagers, both of whom live with the effects of foetal alcohol spectrum disorder: “basically, brain damage due to alcohol exposure in the womb”. His 16-year-old son, he explains, is more severely affected than his 14-year-old daughter: having crashed out of several “inflexible” state schools that did not provide the support his condition demands, he is being tutored at home for 25 hours a week, up from only 12 when the arrangement began. “He is effectively isolated from his peers, almost in solitary confinement,” Wright told me. “He’s had no chance to take qualifications of any kind. There’s no plan for the future at all … It’s been an absolute disaster.”
