DJ Toddla T backs campaign to stop his old Sheffield school becoming an academy

Backing a parents’ campaign to stop his old school being turned into an academy, the 38-year-old remixer and record producer – real name Tom Bell – said: “I am so lucky to be where I am. I could argue I wouldn’t be without King Ted’s.”

Tom, best known for an 11-year stint on BBC Radio 1 and 1Xtra, and musical collaborations with Stormzy, Anne-Marie, Craig David and the rapper Aitch, attended KES from 1996 to 2001.

Whilst the school boasts the second-highest Oxbridge admission rate in Yorkshire, Tom – who started DJing in clubs at 14 and left school at 16 – said for him KES had been ‘an education in real life’.

“I wasn’t academic,” he said. “I was diagnosed with ADHD four years ago. In a systemic educational sense, I hated school. But what that school did for me was the experience of a unique melting pot, a proper cross section of British society.”

Tom, a Blades fan who DJd on the open top bus for Sheffield United’s promotion parade this month, now lives in London with his wife, the superstar DJ and novelist Annie Mac, and their two young sons.

He was brought up between Park Hill and Norfolk Park, where his parents Douglas and Janet still live. Dad Doug, a university lecturer, was among 500 protesters who attended a rally at Sheffield City Hall in April against KES’ academisation.

“I remember travelling across the city to school on the 120 bus, with my headphones on listening to rap music I’d recorded off Radio 1, getting to school and it just being a mad melting pot,” he said. “And for me that’s what school was – learning to navigate the super-posh kids, the inner city kids, the crazy skater kids: that was my education.

“There were kids from all over the gaffe, from my community, from Firth Park, from inner city Broomhall, from more affluent families. It was a melting pot of humans, and that’s what made the experience.”

KES, the last local authority-maintained secondary school in Sheffield, is facing forced academisation after an Ofsted inspection decreed safeguarding was ‘inadequate’ leading to an ‘inadequate’ rating overall.

The school, which has had a non uniform policy for decades, could be compulsorily paired with any multi-academy trust, many of which have strict rules about uniform and conformity.

Tom said when he went to KES, its non uniform policy was ‘a big deal’ to him. “I came out of my house and I set off to school, just a young man trying to get by, and I was myself. Lobbing a uniform into that would have added to how much I wasn’t happy.

“I nearly got kicked out in Y9 for buying ganja. But the headteacher then was Mike Lewis – a legend. He was kind, there was a human side to him, he wasn’t robotic, and I give thanks for the kindness. I got suspended for a few days, I wasn’t ostracised, and the situation moved on quick.

“I’d hate to think what would happen with that scenario if the school was an academy. I’d have been out on my ear no doubt. I would hate to think of anything changing at King Ted’s that would stop another young Tom Bell growing up on Park Hill from experiencing all that.”

He added: “Your teenage years are some of your most impactful and, 100 per cent, why I am sitting here today feeling so blessed is because King Ted’s was part of my journey.”

A proposal to pair KES with the Brigantia trust – which runs five schools in north Sheffield, two of which ‘require improvement’ – has been paused until the summer while the DfE conducts a ‘comparative analysis of additional multi-academy trusts’.

A DfE spokeswoman said: “As with any school that receives an overall judgement of inadequate, King Edward VII will become an academy and be transferred to a strong trust.”