We have an obligation to do more - Tackling social disadvantage

Despite all of the advances we have made, or imagine we have made, in trying to understand each other, two of this week’s events are chilling reminders of how fate is such a dominant, almost insurmountable, force in young lives and how some individual and social behaviour is utterly incomprehensible.

Will Cornick was 15 when he stabbed soon-to-retire teacher Ann Maguire to death in a Leeds classroom. He had, apparently, been planning her murder for three years but gave no indication of the demons that lurked within. He may never be released from prison. Even if you accept that his crime was barbarous and unforgivable, and that he has shown no remorse, this seems an unbearably cruel reality to impose on a now 16-year-old boy. A considerable burden of that sentence, especially emotional trauma, will fall on his parents, described as perfectly ordinary and decent people.

Cornick’s evil delusions decreed his fate, but nothing more than random circumstances defines the life path of the children in the Moyross Corpus Christi primary school, a school that has, because of insufficient pupil numbers, lost a teacher. Like so many schools all around the country, Corpus Christi has had to merge two junior infants’ classes pitting 32 children against each other — not to mention the besieged teacher — in one classroom. These numbers would be challenging in even an ideal, Tiger Mother environment, but because these children come from one of the most disadvantaged communities in the country, it makes an already difficult situation even more challenging.