Voices blog

Yesterday I attend the Linklaters Learn for Work event at Clapton Girls’ Academy to celebrate business support for education in Hackney.

Talking at the event was the Minister for Children and Families, Tim Loughton MP, who applauded the work being done by Linklaters and its Community partners, including the citizenship foundation.

He commented “Business involvement in education is growing and I welcome and encourage this. For many young people in Hackney, the City is so near, yet so far and I congratulate Linklaters and their Learn for Work programme for putting it within their sights.”

It was great to be at the event and speak with some of the students who have been directly influenced by the programme. One student saying to me that she was more confident and always looked people in the eye when speaking to them after the communication and advocacy training we ran with the year 8 students. ‘ I am thinking maybe law as a career now…or maybe a fashion journalist’ Linklaters are the champions of our lawyers in schools programme which now sees 30 odd law firms and in-house legal teams partner with schools across the UK

It is brilliant to see that in a deprived area ofLondon, inspiration flourished among students in their goals to do the best they can during school and welcome the opportunities the business and charity partnerships give to them

Over the last two days I’ve met 33 trainee Citizenship and History teachers from Bradford College and the University of Cumbria.

I visited both groups to deliver training on running mock trials and parliaments in the classroom – which basically involved getting them to participate in the activities and then reflect on how they would apply it in their own lessons.

Although I’m now absolutely shattered (nearly 12 hours training, the same again spent on trains) it’s been an exciting and inspirational couple of days. Each and every one of the teachers I met was enthusiastic, and they all threw themselves into role for the activities I set them.

Particular highlights included the ex-solicitor who gave a witness a very hard grilling during cross-examination, and the parliamentarian who declared that some people might ‘live forever’. In between the funny moments, I hope I gave them plenty of food for thought, and some ideas for activities they can do with their students when they get into the classroom.

The one thing that struck me more than anything was that despite the public-sector cuts and uncertainty of the future of Citizenship as a statutory subject in the curriculum, motivation and positivity amongst trainee teachers is alive and well - and that’s a pretty awesome thing to see.

Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education, at the Sunday Times Festival of Education at Wellington College, in answer to a question about teaching climate change in the curriculum:

“Given the fact that we do not know what the future holds, we need to teach young people to cope with challenges that we currently can’t even imagine. Skills such as critical thinking, analysis of facts and figures, understanding of science etc. are more important than curriculum content.” [As reported by an attendee.]

This is a radical change from his usual belief that a curriculum should be composed of knowledge! Now he apparently thinks skills to be more important.

Erm, can anyone think of the name of a subject that develops skills in critical thinking about public issues …?

This is a horrible posting. I can’t help thinking it though. Yesterday’s tirade against teacher strikes by Michael Gove received such a tiny backlash, certainly in the media, that it’s hard to think that the Unions can pull off a great fight again.

That’s backed up what many pundits believe we’re about to see: the final showdown between the Unions and the country. In this final act, rudely interrupted by the resurgence of a right-leaning Labour Party between the miners’ strikes and now, the government successfully portrays Unionisation as an obsolete facet of the public sector, and shows why it’s time to call that sector a day because it can’t be controlled to the favour of the wider public.

The conclusion is then that it must be privatised (or mutualised) for the greater good.

Should that scenario play out, there could be a dreadful vacuum of mediated workplace relations in the free market. Which is a citizenship issue… If we actually do have (and need) the capability of collectively addressing factors that support social equality but think we’re powerless to do it in relation to the economy, then our national solidarity is undermined.

Over the last 30 years we’ve seen a whole new economic phenomenon that has contributed to inequalities of income: “pre-distribution” of wealth. Formerly taxation was our main form of wealth redistribution – ensuring that wealthier people wouldn’t get excessively well-off whilst poverty went overlooked. But taxation levels have come down such that it no longer has a huge effect (like the 90% of the 60s) in holding back the unfettered wealth of the super rich.

Instead we’ve been taught that participating in a global economy means we have to enable the super rich to enjoy their success or they’ll no longer stay in this country and make money for us.

So lowering taxation saw RE-distribution going down as taxes dropped to a ceiling at 40%. But what we’ve had at the same time is an increase in the PRE-distribution of wealth. By that I mean that the gap between lower paid workers and highest paid has increased to something like 20 fold. So instead of the managers earning 3 times as much as other workers, they can earn 25 times as much, before bonuses. Their income has been PRE-distributed without being subsequently RE-distributed anything like as much.

And there’s nothing we can do about that is there? The market is having its way, and we’re powerless against the market… what is the outcome of such social powerlessness?

The stats are overwhelming on the shocking effects of this inequality. The disparity causes physical and emotional suffering and erodes belief in justice while leaving in place the kind of envy that feeds disenchantment and a shadow economy. That builds ghettoes.

Labour has been consistently criticised for not halting this growth in inequality in its time in government, and on its watch the gap between lowest and highest salary levels actually increased through this Pre-distribution of wealth. There seemed to be no political tool to tackle this. No mechanism for “wage justice” other than the Unions.

‘In the old days’ these were seen to be issues for Unions to resolve. They were the civil society organisations that represented the breadth of the workforce and insisted that the whole of the company should benefit from its success, not a disproportionate number of managers over basic grade workers: not such a high differential across the company. The government would encourage this – implicitly supporting fairness in the workplace as contributing to social stability. It could still do this through the Office for Civil Society.

Perhaps this is the reason that some people believe that citizenship should be taught as part of History. There used to be ways to turn this around, to avoid that disparity of Pre-distribution. If those things become history, these just could be the good old days.

Alternatively – we teach the problem, and ask students to consider what options they’d prefer? What will Wage Justice mean in 20 years time?

On Wednesday evening (16 March), I went to an intriguing panel event, which focused on the topic of ‘Politics verses Young People.’ The event was hosted by the Hansard Society, a political research and education charity and featured panellists including Craig Whittaker MP, member of the Education Select Committee; Adam Crabb, member of Bite the Ballot; Aaron Porter, current president of NUS and Rt Hon David Blunkett MP, former Education Secretary. The panel was facilitated by Michael Rafferty, the Director of the Hansard Society Citizenship Education Programme, and shed a light on issues and possible solutions, one of which included citizenship education.

The focus of the panel was to explore whether the current political system is working for young people. David Blunkett MP spoke first about the ease of his generation and the ‘fairly miserable prospect’ that young people today are facing. He advocated for citizenship education by saying that, ‘This issue around maintaining citizenship in the curriculum is a crucial way of ensuring that young people understand how their voice can be heard, where power and influence lie, but also how they could have that dialog without becoming so disillusioned that the moment something doesn’t change they walk away or they’re burnt out.’ After, Craig Whittaker MP spoke about ways in which he has tried to reach out to young people in his constituency and ways that he plans to get more involved with their issues and concerns. He also made a great point in saying, ‘We need to understand as politicians, that actually young people expect the same things as older people do, so why do we treat them differently?’

Next to speak was Aaron Porter, he spoke of a few key issues - university fees, the Iraq War, and EMA - that are of central importance to young people. He explained that many young people find these issues to be their biggest concern, yet they are often not a priority to politicians, which leaves young people feeling annoyed. He feels that this anger and despair that young people can feel towards the government, as displayed in the student protests, could be alleviated by things such as communication through technology, citizenship education, and a focus on capturing the interests of young people. After, Adam Crabb spoke about the importance of young people in politics. He talked about his reason for getting more involved and stated that, ‘Young people are the future. We all need to get involved.’

Citizenship education came up as a topic for debate a few times. One young man attending the event suggested that citizenship education was not very efficient because the way it was taught and suggested that perhaps there should be creditable citizenship education throughout secondary schools. David Blunkett agreed that it is sometimes not taught properly, but that he felt it was essential and was proud to introduce it. He spoke about how he has been working with Democratic Life, a coalition of organizations looking to keep and improve citizenship education, by meeting with Michael Gove to keep the course in the curriculum. Another young man attending the event suggested that citizenship education should be a full GCSE at all schools because of the amount of important information taught within the subject. Blunkett and Whittaker felt that although citizenship education is extremely important, yet they did not see a need to make it into something that is tested. Aaron Porter, on the other hand, felt that this could be a way to make citizenship education better taught and more of a focus of students.

Other topics that were brought up at the event were EMA, national service or national volunteering, the limited number of women in parliament, and the suggestion that the voting age should be changed to sixteen. I found the event to be extremely interesting and full of fascinating topics of debate. There were many different people of all ages, all with different views and ideas for ways to improve the role of youths in politics. At the end of the event, Michael Rafferty urged that people go on the Democratic Life website. If you’re interested in keeping citizenship education at the forefront of the national curriculum, click here to get more involved!