Scanning through this week’s news, I feel I may have missed out in life by having a state education and not a private one. The story of Richard Glenn, an IT teacher at Longridge Towers School in Northumberland, which charges £4,850 a term for day pupils (£9800 for boarders), was not one I recognise from my five years at Brislington Comprehensive School. Mr Glenn, who was head of the sixth form, led his pupils on a trip to Costa Rica, as you do. At Briz, it was not quite so glamorous.
Once we went to Watchet for a science trip where the highlights included accidentally throwing a pebble at the back of my friend Pete’s head (I was trying to skim it off the waves) and attaching dozens of limpets to the back of the teacher’s waxed jacket (he didn’t notice until we were on the coach home when said limpets started falling off his back onto his seat). And once we went to Wembley to see the Varsity football match but got so pissed after a massive alcohol pick up at Marlborough (as you do when you are 15) the only things I can remember are one lad urinating into a crisp packet, which burst over someone’s head as he attempted to throw it out of the coach window and another lad being violently sick in the stadium, all over the steps where the players would later tread on their way to collect their medals. I suppose you could excuse us – boys being boys and all that – but Mr Glenn was 53 and his antics rather dwarfed ours. Have a look at what he got up to:
- Drinking with pupils
- Allowing one or more pupils to drink alcohol despite being under the legal age of 18
- Threatening to “kick the head in” of one pupil and “kill” another
- Telling one pupil: “I’m not in trouble – you’ll be in trouble”After being aggressive to one pupil, he kissed the boy’s forehead and told him “you’re all right”
- Taking one or more pupils to a strip club
- Acting aggressively towards the woman leading the trip when she tried to help him back to his tent
- Exposing himself to the woman in a shared hotel room, although it was agreed this was not “malicious or sexually motivated”
Obviously, this is very serious indeed and there is nothing remotely amusing about it. Yet, I defy you to read that lot and not find it funny. Quite honestly, it appeared that Mr Glenn was not so much “an experienced teacher and pastoral leader”, as described by the misconduct panel which banned him from teaching for three years, but more one of the lads. Name me a single 16-18 year old boy who would not look at such an overseas break as being the nearest thing to paradise? Being allowed to drink booze, going to watch women take their clothes off? What could possibly be better?
The best thing of all was that “due to his state of intoxication” he couldn’t remember any of what happened. In fact, it appears our favourite teacher spent most of the trip completely shit-faced. Let’s hope his pupils didn’t. I suspect if my year at Briz had been so lucky, we’d have been even worse.
All right, being aggressive to a female teacher when she was trying to assist him back to his tent and then exposing himself to her was probably not very funny, although everyone agreed he was not being “malicious or sexually motivated”.
Either way, I can’t help but wish we’d been afforded such opportunities at Briz. I was hopeless at pretty well everything academically, but naked girls and alcohol? That was more my kind of thing. Mr Glenn and I would have got on just fine.
