The little boy in the grey school sweatshirt walked into his headteacher's office, handed him an official letter that had been sent to his home and burst into tears. "I am writing to inform you," said the letter from the UK Immigration Service, "that arrangements have been made for your removal from the United Kingdom." Additions in ink instructed Zhao Hong Su on the day and time he was to report to Heathrow to catch a flight to Beijing; that was in 1997 when Zhao was eight.
Dai Williams, long-serving head of Lyndhurst primary school in Duckinfield, Greater Manchester, then realised that one of his ablest children was about to be deported. "I tried to calm Zhao down," said Williams. "I told him we would do our best to keep him, that we didn't want to lose a good pupil like him."
Zhao, now 11, arrived in Britain with his mother Xiao Fang, his sister Miao, 16, and brother Jing, 14, in 1995. Three years earlier, his father Lian Hu Su had fled to this country and sought refugee status on the grounds that he could be persecuted for sheltering students during the Tiananmen Square massacre. The family's asylum applications have been turned down. Dates for their deportation have come and gone; the latest was last Wednesday but no police officers arrived at Lyndhurst or nearby Astley High, the comprehensive attended by Miao and Jing. (It now seems there may been a stay of execution for a week, or possibly a month; nothing is certain.)
Even if the law had turned up, neither Williams nor John Mayes, Astley's head, would have let them in. "I would have told them they could not come in without a prior appointment," said Williams. "And if they had made a prior appointment, I would have made sure Zhao wasn't here."
As in similar struggles against deportations at other schools, the Duckinfield heads have chosen to come off the fence to lead active campaigns that have involved pupils, teachers, non-teaching staff and governors. Theoretical lessons about anti-racism, law, justice, politics and the media have suddenly taken on a local, practical resonance.
Three years ago, Lyndhurst's pupils helped to gather 3,000 signatures on a petition and shortly after that, things went quiet. But ominous letters again began arriving at the Su home a couple of months ago. "We told Zhao's classmates, explaining that he would like to stay but an aspect of the law said that he had to go," said Williams. "The children said that they didn't want to lose his friendship and the football team didn't want to lose a star player."
When the latest deportation notices began to arrive, Zhao cried again and was comforted by his class teacher Hazel Heron. "I was horrified that this child who had been in our school for so long was so upset and so unsure of what was going to happen to him," she said. "I felt helpless."
The children fired off letters to the home secretary, Jack Straw. "They really care for Zhao and remember that he didn't know what snow was when he first came here," added Heron. Classmate Sally Backhouse, 11, gave her own tribute to her friend: "He's funny, kind and generous and he helps me with my work."
Over at Astley High Miao's friends, fired with a sense of injustice, queued up to plead her case. "She was one of the first friends I made when I came here," said Roxanne Taylor, 15. "When I found out that she could be sent to China, I got very upset and bought her a present. I can tell her everything and she won't tell anyone else. We have never fallen out."
"She's a bit quiet but people soon got to know her because she gets top marks in tests," added Louise Pearson, 15. "I would like her to stay because all this is upsetting for her and her friends. I don't want to lose a friend."
On the classroom blackboard English teacher Damaris Revell has written the name and address of home office minister Barbara Roche: more letters will soon be on their way from Duckinfield to Whitehall.
Revell's group has been reading Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird as a GCSE set book and has moved on to learn about the civil rights movement and to study Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech. The girls were asked to write their own speeches about something important to them. Some wrote about their families and friends; one wrote about the Omagh bombing; Caroline Williams wrote about Miao's plight: "If the deportation takes place, it won't only be me who will feel upset and hatred towards the government but the entire school, her friends and their families. Remember these are real people with real feelings. This is real life. Please don't ignore it."
Revell senses that the threatened deportations have given a sense of urgency to the girls' consideration of human rights: politics has come into the classroom. "I encourage freedom of speech in my lessons," she said. "I have no qualms about what I am doing.
"I have two young sons and they are at the centre of my universe. I would do anything to keep them safe. Everyone has a right to feel safe and I don't care about passports or borders. We are talking here about three children whom we love."
Astley's head, John Mayes, keeps a cricket ball on his desk and you sense that he would like to throw it at an immigration official. He wrote to the immigration service on behalf of the Su children in September last year and did not receive a reply until 11 months later. It suggested a review of the family's case was under way; but it arrived on the day letters began arriving to give formal notice of deportation.
Astley High's campaign has been run in consultation with Miao and Jing. "It would be easy for me to raise emotions in an assembly and I asked the children if I should do that. They said no, so explanations have been given in a more subtle way in tutor groups," said Mayes. "There has been no tub-thumping. I would prefer our pupils to feel genuine emotion rather than to have things scripted for them. That can be counterproductive."
But Mayes worries about the impact of the campaign on British officials (will it make them more obdurate?), on Chinese officials (will they victimise the Sus if they are forced to return to China?), on the Su children themselves.
Whatever the risks, active campaigning by schools seems to work. The Institute of Race Relations has set up a Schools Against Deportations website, which tells of success stories at three London schools. Staff at Forest Gate school learned that Natasha Matambele was to be sent back to Angola only a day before the deportation was due to take place. With pupils, they launched a campaign that drew in the media. The Home Office delayed the deportation and eventually allowed the family to stay. At Haggerston school in Hackney, east London, Mansanga Nanga, Feliciana Nanga and Muyeke Lemba all faced deportation to Angola. A campaign at the school helped to win them the right to stay. Lal Mohammed, a pupil at Rokeby school in Stratford, was threatened with deportation to Tanzania last year at the age of 15. Lal's plight was explained to pupils in an assembly and refugee topics were covered; pupils wrote letters to ministers and collected signatures. Other agencies were involved. "This should not be part of my job," said English teacher George Fuller. "But none of us had a choice. The school is a ready-made community that can respond quickly in these situations. And that's what made the difference.
"There is no question of manipulation. The letters students wrote were very honest - Lal was quite capable of being unpleasant while this was hanging over him. Many wrote to say he wasn't their mate but felt that what was being done to him was wrong. With some of our boys, it's a sweat to get them to write a couple of lines for coursework. But some of their letters about Lal ran to a whole page."
Lal was allowed to stay, has left school and now hopes to join the navy. "Without the teachers and pupils at Rokeby, the campaign would have been much more difficult," he said.
Dr A Sivanandan, director of the Institute of Race Relations, suggests teachers cannot remain impartial. "Lots of teachers are beginning to take sides because they see the unfairness and injustice of it all," he said. "They are beginning to realise that the ideals taught in schools have to be translated into the world outside. The injustice is so apparent you can touch it. Teachers are becoming alive to that."
Back in the Astley High classroom, Samantha Chadwick considered the school's campaign on behalf of the Su family and said: "If something happens to one person, it happens to the rest of us, too."
The Institute of Race Relations' Schools Against Deportations website is at: www.irr.org.uk/sad/enter.htm
