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The Bristol Cable

Listen: Bristol Unpacked with Sam Williamson, head teacher on education in one of the UK’s most deprived areas

Children’s futures almost stolen, inequality made worse by algorithm and education in the time of COVID-19 in some of the UK’s most deprived neighbourhoods.

Listen: Bristol Unpacked with Neil Maggs
Neil Maggs Rosa Eaton Adam Cantwell-Corn
Neil Maggs, Rosa Eaton and Adam Cantwell-Corn

This week Neil talks to Samantha Williamson, the Principal of Merchants’ Academy. The school is responsible for educating children from Reception to 18 in Withywood and Hartcliffe, areas recognised as among the most deprived in the country.

As the school is operated by the controversial Society of Merchant Venturers, Samantha and Neil discuss how she has felt leading a school connected to Edward Colston’s former club, and their work on creating a new history curriculum to reflect Bristol’s reckoning with its past.

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