Tuesday 23 April 2019

HEADS TO BACK LESSONS ON CLIMATE PROTEST

This article was in the Sunday Times on 19 April

"Head teachers are to support plans for compulsory climate change lessons in primary and secondary schools with children taught to produce protest letters and banners.

It comes as a Newcastle school excluded its head boy after he co-ordinated a school strike over climate change weeks before his A-levels.

The moves highlight the febrile atmosphere generated by climate protests around the UK. The idea of climate lessons - predicted to win support at the annual conference of head teachers next week - comes as schools seek ways to channel their pupils' passion for saving the planet, but without confrontation. Families have been fined for their children's unauthorised absence from school to attend protests.

"I want to make sure children's concerns about the future of the planet are being listened to by policy-makers," said Graham Frost, head of Robert Ferguson Primary School in Carlisle, Cumbria, and official of the National Association of Head Teachers, who will propose the motion.

Such views contrast with Gosforth Academy's response to a 17 year old pupil who handed out climate protest leaflets and was ordered off the premises. He has since been suspended. His parents are appealing against it."

Can you believe a head teacher would propose teaching children to take a partisan view of a political matter such as dealing with climate change. Surely such a move would be against the Education Act 1996, as determined by the judge in this case.

  

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