‘A whirlwind of anguish’: leading a school after a pupil dies

Dealing with the death of a child in your school must be the most horrendous thing you can face as a headteacher. Nothing can prepare you: there is no training, and each situation is so different that the same rules do not always apply.

Receiving a phone call on Sunday 12 February 2023 to inform me that one of my students, Brianna Ghey, had been murdered was one of the worst moments of my life, never mind my career.

The shock hit me physically as well as emotionally but I was also deeply concerned for Brianna’s family, our students, the staff and the wider school community, too.

A whirlwind of anguish

As Brianna’s name and image were released immediately, I had to act straight away while still trying to process what I had been told.

I wrote an email to all staff informing them there was a whole-staff briefing the following morning. I liaised with members of my senior team and the head of service for education at the local authority, who organised for educational psychologists to be on site that week.

I also organised a reflection room and identified students who I thought would be significantly impacted by this devastating news. I wrote a letter to parents and carers ready to send in the morning about what support would be in place for students.

It was a whirlwind of tears, anguish and trying to do the right thing.

Monday morning, I met the senior team early and assigned roles in terms of our critical incident procedures, making sure everything was logged as we went along.

We had to meet the police that day, the press were already trying to get hold of me for a statement and everybody in the community was upset and scared.

I visited all form classes in school to explain what had happened and what support was in place.

The media impact

The local authority helped me to write a statement to be released to the press, as at this point I’d already received numerous requests from media outlets.

There were film crews outside the front of the school who were ringing reception asking for me to come outside to be interviewed. My emails suddenly started to explode and every newspaper or magazine that you can think of was sending me messages.

Given this, we decided to cancel after-school clubs and get the students out of school and away from the press safely - it was very overwhelming for them and for the parents.

Despite this planning and preparation, events still unfolded in ways we could not have predicted.

Someone sold a story to a tabloid paper falsely claiming their child went to our school and they knew Brianna - they made several claims that were untrue. The media then started asking me for responses to these claims.

I didn’t respond - but a few more tabloids ran the story, and on the back of this, I started to receive hate mail. This was a really low point.

If I could turn back time, I would change how I handled this - I should have made a factual statement to say that the person in question did not have a child at my school, but we don’t get media training as headteachers, and not many people ever have to deal with such a situation.

I hope I am never in that position again, but if I am - or other heads are ever dealing with something similar - I would advise seeking PR assistance from a consultant used to dealing with such situations.

Meetings and police support

Another aspect of dealing with Brianna’s death that was difficult was the meetings - police enquiries, multi-agency meetings and reviews that had to be attended.

It is difficult being the only person in the room who really knows the child. Information that is shared can be traumatic - and I don’t think I was really prepared for that.

This is something I raised afterwards with the head of service for education at the local authority - to be mindful that schools have close relationships with children and that should be considered in these formal meetings. She agreed and has passed that message on to the services involved.

In terms of supporting Brianna’s family, we wanted to make sure that we got the balance right. I sent flowers straight away with a message of support, but we knew that her mum, her sister and the rest of her family would be in shock and facing the most horrendous grief, and so didn’t want to intrude.

Instead, we sent messages to her mum, Esther, through the police family liaison officer until she was ready to communicate with us directly. This is hard to get right - to be there to support the family without intruding on their grief in the immediate aftermath.

The police liaison officer is a vital contact in this sort of situation. They deal with tragedies of this nature far more often than we do. They were key in asking for advice on how to communicate with the family.

We knew Brianna’s family well, but we did not know necessarily how to handle this situation in the most compassionate way - the police have this expertise and that should not be overlooked.

Helping the school grieve

For the wider school, we did not want to try to ignore what had happened or simply move on, so remembering Brianna has been a huge part of dealing with our grief in school.

We had an online form to write messages of remembrance, and these were fed through to our website.

We did this through Microsoft Forms and it was set up so that only people from within the school community could submit messages by using a school email account or parent email within our system.

These were then monitored by me and our IT manager before they were published. It allowed us to screen messages and pick up any students whose posts seemed extreme or worrying, as we could see which email address they came from.

We eventually got these messages made into books for Brianna’s family.

Supporting students and remembering Brianna

We also held a Wear it Pink with Pride for Brianna day at school to raise money. We released bubbles, unveiled a cherry blossom tree planted in her memory, sold candy floss, had a pink cake sale and much more.

The day ended with a whole-school assembly where we listened to tributes and the school choir sang songs for her - we were really pleased that her family were able to attend this day, too.

Brianna was a child who struggled with her mental health - she suffered from an eating disorder and anxiety, both of which significantly worsened during lockdown.

Lockdown has had a profound effect on our young people: significant social and educational milestones missed; an increased reliance on social media and the online world. We had already seen the challenges and negative influences of social media in schools long before Covid, but lockdown has exacerbated these ten-fold.

Attendance in schools is shockingly low, and safeguarding concerns are through the roof, as are mental health concerns. We are seeing a generation of children who lack empathy, lack resilience and for whom mental health problems have become part of everyday life.

Anxiety, self-harm and suicidal ideation have become part of our teenagers’ vocabulary.

We have never had a generation that is living through the online world in the way that teenagers do now - where perfection is deemed normal, where any mistake or flaw is played out on a worldwide stage and exists forever, where sexting and nudes are just accepted as the norm.

It is an unforgiving world full of trolls, hate and vitriol. It is a world we cannot remove or escape, so we need to make sure they are equipped to deal with it.

Supporting staff, supporting students

This is why Brianna’s mum is so passionate about getting mindfulness into schools and educating staff and students on this practice.

She is working to raise money to train as many staff in as many schools as possible about mindfulness practice, in order to equip students with another tool to support their mental health. Those interesting in finding out more can register here.

As part of this we are holding a Wear it Pink with Pride day on 7 November and would love to see as many schools as possible take part and help raise money for this campaign. You can see a flyer for the event below.

Mindfulness is about being in the present - not worrying about the past or the future. It is about understanding yourself and understanding how you react in certain situations.

It is about understanding that both positive and negative exist in the world and that is fine; that bad times pass, that negative feelings are normal, and that we can learn how to deal with them.

Emma Mills is headteacher of Birchwood High

You can find out more about the Mindfulness in Schools project here and sign your school up for free training here. To donate money to get more staff in schools trained, donate here