The lunch bell has rung at Caldicot High School, and headteacher Alun Ebenezer, brought in by the local authority last year as an urgent intervention to turn around the underperforming school, has just had to exclude a student he describes as "a nice lad". "Nice family too," he remarks, reclining in his chair within his spacious office adorned with inspirational quotes from figures such as Steve Jobs and Zig Ziglar. When Monmouthshire council enlisted the Ebbw Vale head, who established a free school in Fulham and later became one of the UK's most renowned educational fixers, to temporarily lead the school until Christmas, he cautioned that his tenure would bring change. A year ago, teaching unions depicted a school seemingly governed by its students. Staff had walked out due to disruptive behaviour, with some refusing to teach particular pupils they considered a threat to their safety. Reports also surfaced of pupils feeling petrified. Mr Ebenezer, who has committed to extending his tenure until August 2026 and harbours political ambitions thereafter, wouldn't be surprised if he's set a record for the most exclusions in a year, ten months into his role. "It's not exclusion for the sake of it," reflects the 50 year old headteacher, public speaker, and author, dubbed the "headteacher from hell" by the Daily Mail, reports Wales Online. "Sometimes it's very inclusive to exclude a disruptive pupil. I've just excluded a pupil, a nice lad with a nice family, because it's a consequence for his behaviour and it's necessary. If you've got someone who is disruptive and because of them you've got 29 people in that class who feel uncomfortable and can't get on, then sometimes you exclude to include. We put people in prison to make everyone else feel included and safe in our society, so why not in schools? It's the same principle." He hasn't stopped there. He's introduced Saturday detentions too and punishes pupils by demanding their parents come into school to sit beside them in class. He'd been at the school for a matter of weeks when parents complained about him sending lots of girls home for the lengths of their skirts. He denied claims he had been measuring skirts with a tape measure. While some parents threatened him at the school gates, it wasn't anything new to him. "Believe me, Saturday detention is a huge hassle for me and I don't want to be here on a Saturday either, but there needs to be consequences for poor behaviour," he says. He should have had 15 here at the last Saturday detention but only 11 turned up. The four who didn't were excluded. "Throughout my career I've hit the headlines over uniform, hair styles, all sorts. And some of that coverage has polarised opinion. I've been in the press a lot over the last year and the reaction in the main has been positive. That tells me this has captured the mood of the nation. "I might have been criticised a bit back then but there are over a thousand pupils at this school and now I've got less than a dozen parents on my case. Doesn't that tell you something? I like the mantra: 'Big doors swing on little hinges.' Say please and thank you, hold the door open for others, have a positive attitude, and wear the correct uniform. It's important because it all makes for a brilliant culture. Uniform is about pride and being proud of your school and your community. When I was in Fulham we had a school there where you had sons of multi-millionaires rubbing shoulders with some of the poorest young people in London and yet you wouldn't have been able to tell because those pupils wore their uniforms correctly." The bullish head who grew up in Beaufort as a "free school meal boy" doesn't mind being referred to as "old school". "There's no school like the old school," he laughs. "Honestly, I don't care what people think of me regarding that. How arrogant would it be to say the history of the world has been waiting for our arrival on the scene? No. You learn from the past. There were things that went on when I was a child which were wrong." He recalls a time when he saw a teacher who had been bitten by a child bite the child back. "Really wrong," he says. "But there were lots of things that weren't wrong and we've kind of thrown the baby out with the bath water. Part of the problem, I believe, is that the pendulum has swung too far the other way. Now the children are in charge. "We have now found ourselves in a position where Wales is bottom of the PISA (programme for international student assessment) tables. We have to change the direction of travel. When I became an assistant headteacher at a school in Treorchy, which was the best school in Wales at the time, I remember the head saying to me: 'Alun, if you're not part of the solution in six months you're part of the problem.' That's always stuck with me. And yet we've had 25 years of a Labour government and look where we are." As he poses for a picture in the corridor of the school's English department I notice the walls have been decorated in messages such as "be kind to yourself" and "speak to yourself like you'd speak to your friend". There are also reminders that Instagram isn't the real world. He says social media and with that an "obsession with me, me, me" is the one thing young people are struggling with the most. "I'm reading a book at the moment called Generations and it paints a picture of just how different life is now for young people. They're having to navigate things now that we never had to think about. Me is my biggest problem and it's the same for all of us. If we're bringing up a generation that is constantly focusing on themselves all of the time, to me that's a huge issue. If we stop being so obsessed with ourselves maybe we'd be a bit happier. I don't think we're doing young people many favours in our approach. We've told young people to focus on themselves but it's making them miserable. We live in a day and age now where we tell young people 'Be whatever you want to be that makes you happy.' And 'The most important thing is that you're happy.' We've rammed this down their throats, this obsession with being really happy, and yet they've never been more entertained but they're bored, and they've never been more indulged but they're unhappy. It's not working. Equally I don't believe in beating this generation up for that. We created this generation." According to analysis by the Centre for Social Justice currently one in five children aged eight to 16 have a probable mental health disorder - up from one in eight in 2017. The centre forecasts this could be one in every four children by 2030 if current trends persist. Self-harm among girls aged eight to 17 has also more than doubled since 2007 and eating disorders in young women have jumped from 2% in 2017 to 21% in 2023. According to Mind, young people in the UK now have a higher mental health need than ever. Mr Ebenezer believes there is an issue with "over-labelling". "Life is hard. Growing up is tough. Navigating your teens is difficult. Coming to work is stressful at times. I can go home today and tell my wife I've had a difficult day and she'll tell me 'That's why you get paid the money mate.' And she's right. At the moment as soon as people feel anxious it's anxiety and as soon as people feel sad it's depression. Sometimes maybe it's just life. Most things I do from Monday to Friday, I'd rather be doing something else. That doesn't mean if young people are struggling they shouldn't ask for help. Of course they should. Asking for help is a great thing and is about taking responsibility." He wants to talk about the Netflix series Adolescence which has been acclaimed for its harrowing portrayal of young men and knife crime. In 2023-24 53 of 64 - or 83% - homicide victims aged between 13 and 19 in the UK were killed with a sharp instrument, according to figures published by the Office for National Statistics last month. And in new data revealed through a freedom of information request by the producers of Brianna: A Mother's Story which aired on ITV this week, according to police violent crimes in schools in the UK have risen by nearly 25% in three years. The data, obtained from 40 police forces, shows that from 2021 to 2024 almost 100,000 offences were reported. There were allegations of stalking as well as 4,500 reports of students being in possession of weapons. Earlier this week the National Crime Agency warned that "sadistic and violent" online gangs of teenage boys were committing extreme crimes after becoming "desensitised" to graphic material they saw online. Mr Ebenezer says it'll be a "very sad day" if schools nationally are asked to carry out security checks on pupils over concerns around some bringing weapons in. "Culture is everything. I was the head of an inner London school for nine years and as a matter of principle we only had one CCTV camera where the delivery lorries came in and out. There weren't any metal detectors checking pupils like other schools were doing. We didn't put locks on classroom doors. We're trying to create a culture. It's an approach. It's about creating a culture where knife crime isn't even on the agenda. I have come across situations where it's happened and you have to take a no nonsense approach. Of course it would mean permanent exclusion. At the same time you have to find out why on earth a kid feels they have to take a knife into school. "Boys don't know how to be now. It's an identity issue. Why has Andrew Tate had so many hits on his website? Because society is pushing boys to extremes and it's so dangerous. We really have to get away from this cancel culture. We have to allow people to have different viewpoints and be able to challenge each other in a safe environment. Part of the problem is we don't live in a liberal society. We live in an aggressively liberal society. That's why you've got people being marginalised to the extremes. Young boys are being told masculinity is toxic. I don't believe masculinity is toxic. I believe it can be. But that is the message being fed to these young boys, that it's toxic. And they don't know where to turn." He's just asked his assistant head to put together a co-curriculum for next year which will be among the best in the nation. It'll include trips to Africa and South America and is all part of changing a culture in the hope that when he leaves Caldicot High will be in the top 20 best comps in Wales. "In Caldicot you've got young people who are pretty affluent and you've also got young people who are quite poor, relatively speaking. 14% of our pupils are on free school meals. I've asked the assistant head to design the best co-curriculum possible; South Africa rugby trip, Brazil geography trip - the lot. The school's responsibility is not to make those trips equally available but equitable. We should offer them and as a school say: 'We have six children here who can't afford to go, so who wants to sponsor the child?' Or we crowdfund. You don't go to the lowest common denominator." You can sign up for all the latest court stories here Find out what's happening near you