RH: What advice would you give to actively-engaged fathers at this time?

ZR: Ooh... be uninhibited and stupid with your kids... be uninhibitedly stupid. I mean be a real person, don't pretend that you're not an adult who farts or scratches his armpits the same as everybody else and don't be afraid of making a fool of yourself in front of your kids 'cos they just love it.

RH: Wonderful. Thank you [laughs]. Is there a threat at the moment from the Ofsted inspection?

ZR: Yes, we're living under a threat at the moment, yes. They haven't come back to see us again. They haven't even acknowledged our letter actually which I'm a bit miffed about but they said they were going to come and inspect us. I guess they'll come next term now and I don't suppose they'll like what they find but I don't think they'll close us immediately because of all the stuff that's been in the press. I don't think that they'll dare do it straight away but I'm sure they're going to have a go at it.

RH: It has been well covered in the press, hasn't it?

ZR: Yes, it has. We've had a lot of support for a change [laughs]. We usually get murdered by the press.

RH: Do you really think it's going as far as a possibility of closure? Do you see that happening?

ZR: Yeah I do. I can't see the way out, you see. We're looking into the possibility of a suit in the European court about parental rights but it seems as if it's going to be fraught with all sorts of complications and things. The legal people I've talked to so far seem to be terribly excited about it, but then they keep saying, "Oh, there's this and oh there's that", so we are actually actively looking into that but of course it'd be hugely expensive. You don't go [straight] to European court, apparently you have to go through all the English courts first which cost you about half a million quid or something which we haven't got, needless to say. But other than that if we can't go to court and claim our rights as parents to choose the kind of education we want for our kids then I don't really know but I do know that the standards that they're asking us to achieve are not standards that we can guarantee to achieve, in fact we don't even try - we don't want to! We're not trying to do that and there comes a point when you have to just say, "Well, sod off I'm not going to do that", and I'm afraid that point is sort of now really. We're doing an awful lot mind you. There are many, many things that I think they'll be really impressed with but at the end of the day the kids don't have to go to class if they don't want to and if seven and eight year-olds don't have to go to class they very often don't... and that's the name of the game.

RH: If you were looking at closure would you think of going abroad?

ZR: I don't know. I've been asked that. I'm fifty-one, I've got a family, we live on a farm near the school and I've lived in Leiston all my life and, yeah, I would consider it but it would be really difficult and I certainly wouldn't move abroad. I'd want to come home. I'll never give up my house and things because I love it here. But yes, if I have to drive past Summerhill School and it was a building site it would make life very miserable.

Date: 2016-01-05; view: 846