How Arthur went from drug dealer to head boy (with a little help from a very inspiring headmistress)

Head boy Arthur Lutaaya and head mistress Sally Coates.

Arthur Lutaaya is proud of the shiny gold Head Boy badge which is pinned to his immaculate school blazer. He admits, somewhat shyly, that when it was first awarded, he would polish it every day.
It is an honour that 17-year-old Arthur wears well. He greets visitors to the school with a brilliant smile and a firm handshake. Younger children follow in his footsteps and, within the walls of Burlington Danes Academy, it is said that if you have a problem, Arthur will guide you through it.
This might seem the everyday story of a high-achieving schoolboy destined for university and a glittering future. But just two years ago, when he was 15, Arthur lay at the school gates after having been beaten unconscious by a drugs gang he owed money to.

The attack was so savage that his teachers believed he was dead. It seemed a violent end to a feral life of squalor, waste and drug dealing.
Incredibly, on the day that Arthur nearly died he vowed to turn his own life around - and in doing so he has also helped transform his failing school. While Arthur became the dream pupil, Burlington Danes Academy in White City, West London, became one of the most improved schools in the country.
And at the heart of his transformation is the doughty headmistress who refused to give up on either him or her school.
Sally Coates, a slightly-built brunette, cuts a small figure against her towering head boy - but Arthur looks up to her in every way.
He says simply: 'She has been my inspiration. She has given me the courage to turn my life around, and the confidence to achieve anything I want to do.
'When I came back to school after recovering from the attack, I was called in to see the head teacher. I knew she would want me out of the school - and I didn't blame her.
'But as I sat in the room with my mum, I listened to the headmistress talk; and for the first time, I felt a sense of belonging. I'd never experienced that emotion before.
'We totally understood each other and it was as if she could read what I was thinking.
'She said my choice was either to carry on the way I was, go to jail and die young - or to succeed. I chose success, and I chose a new life.'
Until his meeting with Sally Coates, Arthur was a textbook government statistic of a young life gone wrong.
Born in London to Ugandan parents, his mother and father divorced when he was 13 years old. fter that, Arthur lived in a series of bed-and-breakfast rooms with his mother and five sisters, the family struggling to survive on her income as a care assistant.
With no father figure, and with a mother who often worked in the evenings, he began to run with local gangs who terrorised the neighbourhood in West London.
He says candidly: 'I was immature. I was running wild and there was no money for anything in my life, so I decided to make my own cash. I never took drugs, but I began to deal cocaine, paying the money back to big drug gangs.
'I was 14 years old and I didn't think for one moment about the consequences of what I was doing. I didn't think about the people who would become addicted to the drugs. I just cared about buying my own way out of poverty.'

Arthur and the school he has helped to revitalise.

When, in April 2008, a new headteacher, Sally Coates, arrived to take charge at Burlington Danes Academy, Arthur was immediately flagged up as a problem pupil.
He says: 'I had no interest in school. I was in year 10 and I knew the teachers expected me to fail all my GCSEs. I didn't care. I played truant most of the time, and when I did turn up at school I would disrupt lessons just for the fun of it. 'Some teachers tried to tell me that I had a good brain - but I didn't care. I had no pride, no ambition and no sense that my life was worth anything.'
But in June 2008 two things happened. First, Arthur was arrested by police in possession of drugs and a court date was set. Shortly after, his drug suppliers came looking for their money.
When Arthur could not pay them, they wreaked a terrible revenge - lying in wait for the boy at the school gates.
Arthur says: 'As I walked out of school, about 12 men jumped on me. They were all aged around 18, and I remember thinking "This is it, I'm going to die", as they knocked me to the ground.
'I was kicked unconscious, and I vaguely remember lying in someone's arms, before waking up in hospital.'

On her way to a meeting in South London, Sally Coates received a call from a member of staff to tell her of the violence which had erupted at the gates of her new school.
Sally, 57, says: 'My staff were in complete shock because of the ferociousness of the attack. The teacher who'd run outside and found I took one loo sobbing face had to turn Arthur had thought he was dead.
'As they told me what had happened, my heart sank. I thought: "He can't come back to the school." There was no way I could keep a pupil who invited such danger to the school gates.'
But lying in hospital, his battered, bruised and bloodied head covered in dressings, Arthur had time to reflect.
'When I woke up and saw my mother crying by the bed, I felt worse than I had ever felt in my life,' he says. 'It wasn't just the pain of my injuries, it was the pain of seeing my mum so upset.
'I realised that I had let her down and I suddenly wondered about my own future. I realised that all I faced was jail and then some kind of violent death. My whole life would have been wasted and my poor mum would be put through further torment.
'I started to wonder if I should run away, to escape trouble. But then I looked at Mum and I thought: "I can change." I realised then that it wasn't too late to change my life and the way that I behaved.'
But Arthur's future now depended on a headmistress who had been hired to bring discipline back to a failing school. And she had already decided that she wanted him out.
Sally says: 'Over the next week, as Arthur recovered from his attack, I spoke to his mother. She was utterly distraught. She had not only faced the shock of being called to the hospital to see her child lying unconscious, but also the further horror of finding out that he had been peddling drugs.
'Her worst fear was that she wouldn't be able physically to stop himm going straight back to those gangs once he recovered.