Filmed by BBC’s The One Show, Millfield’s new Head Boy, Yuriel Kpalobi shares how a fully-funded bursary from the school has helped turn his life around for the better
It’s not every day that a BBC television crew turns up at your school to ask about your educational journey. But that’s exactly what happened to Yuriel Kpalobi, Upper Sixth pupil and now Head Boy, on the first day of the spring term this year.
Met by his former GCSE English teacher, Mehreen Baig, Yuriel was asked to appear on The One Show to tell his story, after receiving a bursary from the school just over a year ago.
However, it was only three years ago that the 17-year-old was on the verge of being expelled from his former state school in Tottenham, north London. He says, “We were fighting, vandalising things, shoplifting, playing with dangerous weapons… we were just doing very antisocial things.” After a series of incidents, Yuriel was suspended for two weeks. Meanwhile, his older sister had just been made Head Girl at the same “Ofsted-outstanding” school. “My thoughts were, ‘we come from the same family, we have the same blood ? how are we so different"'” he says.
“She really made me believe that I could do it too. I could bring that happiness that she brought to my mum.”
A change for the better
It was then that Yuriel decided to knuckle down, and managed to achieve 10 GCSEs as a result. When he found out that Millf...