Voices blog

At a Girl Guiding UK event last week I heard Lynne Featherstone MP speak passionately about the imbalance in opportunities for men and women and of the government’s desire to address this.

Before she spoke there were energetic discussions about the pressures on young women, where they stem from and how to challenge them.

With my Citizenship Foundation hat on, I put it to a few other delegates that the citizenship curriculum provided an important space to challenge gender stereotypes. They all agreed.

Yet we expect Michael Gove to remove citizenship’s status as a statutory curriculum subject. So while Lynne Featherstone is finding opportunities for young women to thrive, her colleague Mr Gove is in danger of taking away some of those very opportunities.

Therefore I wrote to Lynne Featherstone to ask if we had her support in government:

Dear Lynne,

It was very good to hear you speak at Girlguiding UK’s round-table event last night. I was encouraged by the extent of the government’s work in addressing gender issues.

However, I asked a few delegates if they thought young women would be further disadvantaged by the removal of citizenship from the National Curriculum. The answer was a resounding yes: taking away such structured support for engaging with societal issues and challenging stereotypes can only be a backward step.

Yet it seems clear that citizenship will not survive the Curriculum Review.

Citizenship classes expose young people to the complexities of society and develop their engagement with political and legal issues, in a safe and structured environment. And they enable students to address issues arising from differences such as gender before those issues become a problem.

As you said last night, the government is passionate about tackling gender equality. The citizenship curriculum is the ideal place to support this in school.

Can we count on your voice in government to defend this space on the curriculum?

Yours sincerely,

Michael Grimes

About ten months ago I was approached by Kids Connections to sit on the advisory group for a new resource called ‘Equal Rights, Equal Respect‘ that they were producing for the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

The resource is aimed at students in key stage 3 and is free. It features supporting videos and a wide range of ideas to teach about human rights and equality issues.

On 2nd November at 4.30pm you can attend an online training session to learn more about equality and human rights laws and how you can use the resources. There will also be an opportunity to ask an expert panel questions. To attend, all you need to do is register for the session.

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 …?