In recent Life Studies lessons, students have been looking at the work done by the UK coalition of the Global Campaign for Education, ‘Send My Friend to School‘.
The campaign seeks to increase community awareness of the state of education internationally and generate the political will necessary to ensure the UK plays an active and effective part in efforts to secure education for all. As part of this, our students have been working on a classroom activity to create a jigsaw outlining what children should be entitled to within education, and the missing piece symbolises the lack of money provided to pay for good quality schooling. Schools are urged to get in touch with their local MP’s and ask them to pass the students’ concerns on to the Secretary of State for International Development.
“Students over the last 5 weeks have been looking at the right to education, doing work which explores why globally there are 72 million children not being educated, with a high percentage of those being females. We’ve looked at all the different things that contribute towards this such as poverty, disease, famine, war zones – but also looking at the fact that disabled children in many countries don’t get equality and females missing out purely because they’re females.
Poverty is a big one, because in a lot of countries if you can’t afford a uniform you can’t go to school to get educated. What we are trying to do is get MP’s and world leaders as a whole to recognise that we think it’s important to address the issue and to try and change it so that all 72 million children currently out of education are given the same opportunities and equality.” – Mr Bell
We invited our local Member of Parliament Alison McGovern into school to see the work our students had created, and she has promised to take their messages to the relevant people in parliament. Alison spoke of how important it is for our students and the rest of her constituents to reach out to her about the issues they are passionate about – stressing that she is only as strong as the people she serves.
“I think I’m quite lucky and it’s unfair for everyone else – we don’t have to pay for our education. I’m able to go on to university and work for a decent life but they can’t. With schools and homes getting destroyed they’re obviously going to struggle to get a fair education”
– Charlie, Year 8
“We’ve been listing some of the most important things that need to be addressed in poorer countries schools, like food & clean water being available to children. We definitely take how lucky we are for granted. We could be giving them more money to help their schools and raise awareness for the politicians.”
– Daniel, Year 8