Tom Daley - Photo Steve Punter CCA
Tom Daley is going to move schools as a result of bullying at his current school, according to a report on the BBC’s Newsround. Everyone who has been to a school (or watched a formulaic television show) will know that being different is not the way to go, and that kids who are picked on for being different will go home to their parents and be told not to worry because the other kids are just jealous.
Sometimes the other children aren’t jealous at all and just think the kid is a bit weird, but not in Tom Daley’s case. It’s definitely just jealousy:
Tom: Alright guys, welcome back to school - how was your summer?
Kids: Yeah, alright Tom, we hung around the park a lot, tried smoking a bit and it made us cough. Talked about girls who aren’t interested in us, played a few video games, that sort of stuff. How about you?
Tom: Oh - that sounds like fun. I just went to the Olympic Games in China to see if I was the best in the world at diving from 10 metres into a swimming pool.
Kids: How did it go?
Tom: Turns out that I’m not the best in the world, just the seventh best. Still, could be worse though.
Kids: How come?
Tom: Well, I’m 14. They’re all adults. So basically, I’ve got loads of room to improve and they’re pretty much at their best. What, on account of them being adults and me still basically being a child.
Kids: You’re different.
The article is all the better for a textbook piece of denial from the school’s principal:
When Tom was taken out of Eggbuckland Community College the school’s principal, Katrina Borowski, said she was unaware of any bullying.
She probably should have read the Guardian, then - on April 18th they ran an interview with Daley. If it involves your most-famous student, and you’re head of the school he attends, it’s conceivably worth at least skimming it:
And yet, sitting next to him on a Tuesday morning in the school holidays, it’s difficult not to feel sympathy for all he endures in his supposedly ordinary life at Eggbuckland Community College in Plymouth. His delight in an extended Easter break is two-fold. Apart from presenting him with a chance to progress further in the world series this weekend in Sheffield, Daley can escape the taunts that blight his life at school.
“It’s gone on a long time,” he says of the hounding that now resembles bullying, “but it reached a peak after the Olympics and has just stayed there. They’ve been taking the mick for ages, calling me ‘Diver Boy’, but they now spend most of their time throwing stuff at me. I thought it would calm down but it hasn’t.”
Daley shrugs when asked if he is being targeted by a group of kids who resent his celebrity without understanding the dedication and loneliness that dominates his diving life. “It’s even the little kids,” he says. “They copy the older ones. Normally I try not to go out during breaks if I can help it. I just stay in class.”
It sounds sad that a 14-year-old has to be cooped up inside his classroom in order to evade jibes sparked by his fame as a diver. “It is sad and annoying that I can’t have a normal school life. But I put up with it because I’m doing something I love,” Daley says. “And I’m lucky I’ve got four good friends. They either sit in class with me or we try and find a far-off corner of the field where no one can see us.”
Daley is fatalistic when asked if the school is doing anything to help him. “If a teacher sees the kids doing it they’ll tell them to stop, but I’ve got to the point that I really don’t care. I’m away from school a lot anyway.”
Embarrassing.
