Lutterworth College - Controversy

Controversy

An article published by the News of the World newspaper under the headline "It's St. Sinians", on April 29, 2007, revealed that for the four years up to 2007, it handed out 345 morning-after pills to girls at the school. This ranked it one of the highest distributors in the country. The article was followed widely, and covered in the following days by newspapers including the Daily Mail and Daily Mirror. However the school defended itself in saying that it runs a "Strictly Confidential" service at the school, which allows students to meet a doctor in school time. The school faced especially strong opposition from pro-life groups, with the UK Life League even publishing the principal's home number and address and compelling people to protest outside it. They have since taken these down, citing that they had moved onto new projects. In the spirit of the school, the students maintained strong support for the head teacher, and the "Strictly Confidential" service.

It later came to light that the "Strictly Confidential" service offered by the school was in fact introduced two years before the current headmaster had begun working there. Furthermore, it was completely controlled by the local doctor's practice, not by the school. Students went on to form a Myspace page dedicated to supporting their headmaster, and hundreds of students signed up. This resulted in the anti-abortion groups' and newspapers' attempts to damage the school's reputation failing, particularly due to widespread local support.

In August 2008, Pat Schofield, an external examinations officer who works at the college, complained about Carol Ann Duffy's poem "Education For Leisure", describing it as "absolutely horrendous" due to its references to knife crime. Duffy responded by writing a poem entitled "Mrs Schofield's GCSE", highlighting the use of violence and stabbings in Shakespeare's plays. In response, Schofield said that she was "gobsmacked" and that she found the poem "a bit weird" as she found much of Duffy's poetry. Many of the school's students resented the decision to remove the poem (having the opinion that it was by far one of the most interesting to examine, and also one of the easiest to compare and contrast with) and felt that Mrs Schofield clearly had only a very basic understanding of poetry. The poem was then replaced.