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UK: Our school drug ordeal

Jessica Davies

The Times

Friday 05 Mar 2004

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Viewpoint



The government wants random drugs tests in schools. Here, the mother of a
girl who tested positive for cannabis tells why such tests can be unfair,
degrading and educationally ruinous

NEWS OF the Government's plans for random drugs testing in schools has been
greeted with dismay in our household. For six years ago, a term before she
was due to sit her GCSEs, our daughter Connie was nearly lost to the
education system thanks to just such an aggressive drugs policy. The
private London day school she attended gave her a urine test - without my
husband's or my permission. The school had recently introduced the test as
part of its anti-drugs policy, but had not tried it out before.

Even though there was no evidence that she had taken any drugs during
school time, Connie was scapegoated as a warning to others. The
consequences for her were horribly damaging.

Connie was 15 and had never been in any trouble at school. We suspected
that, like most teenagers, she was a weekend spliff-smoker. As a social
worker I am probably more aware than most of what drugs can do to people's
lives, and like any responsible parents we had warned our daughter of the
dangers of drugs use. On the day in question Connie and her friend left the
school grounds at lunchtime, which was against the rules, because they had
heard that a local boy was going to be outside distributing flyers for a
gig that weekend.

The boy was apparently known as a drugs user, and when a teacher spotted
the girls talking to this boy and smoking, she challenged them. Connie said
that I was dropping off her viola for her and that they had come outside to
wait for me. But the teacher frogmarched them to the headmaster's office
and said that she had seen the girls with a suspicious person and that it
looked as though they were 'trading'.

The girls were taken to separate rooms, each with a senior member of staff,
and their clothes and bags were searched. Nothing was found on them: no
money, no dope. By this time they were apparently crying and asking for
their parents, but although I was at home that day nobody contacted me.
When the headmaster cross-examined Connie she confessed immediately that
she had told a lie - that she hadn't gone out to meet me at all, but had
gone outside to smoke a cigarette and to pick up the flyers.

Just before half past three that afternoon the head called me and said he
needed my permission for the urine test. As it transpired, the test had
already taken place. And when I arrived at the school to collect my
daughter and discovered I had been duped (the school subsequently claimed
they had been unable to contact me) I was absolutely furious. In the
previous school year, drugs had been found on a group of pupils on a school
trip and nobody had been tested. Yet here was my daughter, who had not been
found with drugs, being tested without our consent. It seemed a gross and
unfair overreaction. Arguably it was also illegal.

The test results took about two weeks to come back. Fortunately for the
school, Connie and her friend failed it. We might well have sued if it had
been otherwise. As it was, we were not overly surprised: cannabis can stay
in your system for as long as 90 days in extreme cases and when Connie told
us she had smoked cannabis at a party a few days before the events at
school, we believed her. Had evidence of drugs been found on her at school
we would have supported an appropriate sanction. But with no further
evidence, it should have been the end of the matter.

The head, however, took the view that the school had to take a stand on
pupils' weekend and holiday habits. He seemed set on making an example of
the girls. He made us agree to submit Connie to two further tests, and said
that she wouldn't be able to sit her GCSEs if there was further evidence of
drugs use.

We should have stood our ground, but with exams coming up the following
term we had no choice but to accept the head's conditions. - very
reluctantly. Had we not done so, he would have expelled her, she would have
had to postpone her GCSEs for a year and I honestly think that we would
never have got her back into the system. Having been doubted, disbelieved
and labelled, she would have given up. So Connie had to prepare for her
GCSEs knowing that she also faced two further urine tests, which - because
of the way cannabis remains in the system - she could still fail even if
she never touched the drug again. She felt very angry and very unjustly
treated, not least because there were people known to be dealing at school,
but nobody was doing anything about them.

At one meeting the deputy head told us that he thought 60 per cent of
senior pupils had used cannabis at some time. Connie failed the second test
but passed the third one. It was a humiliating procedure which involved a
teacher being present and a nurse testing the temperature of the urine to
ensure that it was a genuine sample.

A lot of the staff disagreed with the way our daughter was treated, and I
remember one coming to see us and saying that he wanted no part in what the
school was doing. The head insisted that the matter was private, but of
course word got out and the Chinese whispers started. Having never dealt
drugs in her life, Connie had people coming up to her in school and trying
to buy drugs. The school offered her no support, and she became very
disillusioned by the unfair public disgrace. She knew she would have to
leave the school for A levels - we couldn't keep her on after this - but
she couldn't imagine where she would go. She sank to a low ebb. Her
confidence was destroyed and her motivation undermined. For a teenager,
self-esteem is everything and hers was in shreds.

Amazingly, she made it to all her exams and passed all but one. She went on
to sit her A levels at a sixth-form college and was lucky enough to meet an
inspiring teacher who turned her life around for her. She is doing her MA
next year. Her friend has been less fortunate and had more difficulty in
moving on. I often wonder how different it might have been for Connie if I
had been a single parent struggling with other problems and unable to buy
her a fresh start for her A levels elsewhere.

Tony Blair is pulling this scheme out of a hat without thinking what it
will do to teachers, many of whom will not want to participate in random
drugs testing, and to children who will be unfairly stigmatised and who
will, as a consequence, be lost to the education system for ever. And what
of alcohol, Ecstasy, heroin and cocaine? Alcohol does not linger in the
system as cannabis does, so children worrying about being tested at school
have plenty of more harmful alternatives that they can explore without fear
of discovery.

I told my daughter's school at the time that if they wanted to take
positive action against drugs, they ought to sweep the whole year - test
everyone anonymously, publicise the results, tell the parents and then talk
to the children about the dangers of drug-taking. They never did.

After Connie left, I heard that the headmaster had stood up in assembly and
told the school that the pupils who had been drugs-tested had failed their
GCSEs. Of course it wasn't true - not in Connie's case, anyway.

But then none of it was ever true. A lot of people felt that the situation
was handled very badly, and while my daughter's peer group was at the
school there was no further random drugs testing.

 

 

 

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