Do we live in the best possible world?

Robin Bevan served as elected national president of the National Education Union in 2020-21, following many years in trade union leadership. A teacher since 1989, a Headteacher since 2007, Robin is committed to ensuring that education in all our schools reflects the values of the future society we would wish to see as a legacy for the next generation.

“Do we live in the best possible world?”


“Have we come to the end of all the changes that our society needs?”


“Should we be working towards a transformed future?”

 

At the heart of the vision for the school which I lead, as Headteacher, is an expectation that we are working to cultivate a new generation of activist leaders. Our vision is to educate pupils – through the curriculum, extra-curricular provision and the ‘way that we teach and lead’ – to be agents of change: knowledgeable, skilful, empathetic, and committed to worthwhile causes.

 

Working life with young people in a secondary school can be challenging. There are trends in society that can feel dispiriting. For a decade or more, in the UK, our national leaders have conspicuously failed to communicate a narrative of hope for the future. Indeed, they have – to a large extent – advance their policies on the basis that ‘the past was better than the probable future’.

 

And yet, sat in front of year group assemblies, I often ask the questions that opened this article. And, without exception, every young person responds positively. Our young people recognise there is much that needs to change. The next generation is clear what needs to be done.

 

Schools exist for the society that is yet to be. Sadly, in England, education is too often shaped within frameworks that retain patterns of privilege, hierarchy, employment and economic resource. For some, education exists only to leverage personal advancement; for others, it’s there only for employment; and there are even those who see publicly-funded schooling solely as a mechanism to minimise social security payments and limit criminality.

 

When we ask young people about the best possible future, their answers are compelling. They have varied views, but there are repeated threads. They look to a more international – global – future, with permanently permeable national borders. They speak of the need to address poverty and relative poverty. They know the reforming journey of equality and inclusion is not yet complete: across strands of gender, sexuality and disability. They openly accept the challenge to our global ecosystem and the need for a paradigmatic shift in the use of non-renewables. And so we set out to infuse the school with a culture that welcomes and celebrates diversity. This work has been initiated, developed and led by students: speaking in assemblies, developing displays, organising events on Black History, LGBT+ rights and disability.

 

Our school openly recognises that climate warming represents an impending existential threat. We set out to reduce substantially the reliance on fossil-fuel transport for school journeys – for students and staff. This work has been shaped and enacted by students: leading cycling events, visiting countries with high levels of cycling engagement, overcoming cultural barriers to bicycle use and dispelling myths regarding the safety of urban cycling.

Our school now has one of the highest levels of daily cycling of any school in the country. We have had to expand secure storage provision to allow for 250 bikes daily.

 

Our school acknowledges that relative wealth brings privilege, and that – for international trade – this allows Western consumers, unwittingly, to exert purchasing pressure that drives down the market price of cash crops in the country of origin. We set out to promote Fairtrade principles: sourcing, using and selling Fairtrade produce. The relevance of mass campaigns of low-level consumer actions has profound authenticity when our students have worked alongside coffee farmers in India and welcomed a Colombian hill farmer to the school.

 

If, as Herbert Spencer suggested, the great aim of education is ‘not knowledge but action’ then the greatest pedagogy must be participatory immersion in acts of social change. There is a compelling challenge for all educators: to explore and articulate a clear framework of values for our work, to interrogate whether our provision is consistent with our values, and then to initiate social action projects that align pupil learning to our renewed and purposeful intent.



First published in Engage 24.


ROBIN BEVAN • August 22, 2022

36 Bicycles. Countless Futures in The Gambia.

By Ann Beatty • May 20, 2026
How a simple act of practical solidarity is transforming the journey to school in The Gambia’s Central River Region North Policies have been written. Schools have been built. Yet for many children in The Gambia’s Central River Region North, access to education is still measured in kilometres, not opportunity. 

Education for Hope in Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous Times

By Laura Griffin • May 13, 2026
‘In a single hour vast tracts of shaded woodland became a jumble of torn trees and upturned soil, exposed to the glare of the summer sun. Such land-clearing events are rare, but forests exhibit remarkable resilience in the face of disaster. I’m told that the Chinese character for ‘catastrophe’ is the same as that which represents the word ‘opportunity’. And, the blowdown, while catastrophic, presented opportunities for many species.’ (Wall Kimmerer, 2003: 89). In the context of a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world (Stein, 2021) what kinds of education for hope might support children’s and young people’s critical engagement in local and global issues? In the spirit of exploring the possibilities of hope further, this short article focuses on the area of global citizenship and sustainabilityrelated education. It will briefly open by sharing commonalities across pedagogical approaches that take up the concept and act of hope more critically, and close by offering reflective questions for educators, with suggestions for further reading. Perhaps it is a kind of hope that is grounded in the present, in future reimagining(s), in ethical solidarity, and an acknowledgement of our deep entanglement with the living metabolism of planet earth 1 our singular home (UNESCO, 2021); a hope that engages with complex root causes and lived realities of multiple overlapping crises in critically reflexive and contextually relevant ways. As McCloskey notes, ‘Hope can fire our collective imagination and critical consciousness as a mainspring to activism and intervention in the world.’ (2025: 3). Commonalities across critical pedagogical approaches to hope include: Acknowledging the context of a ‘seamless single story of progress, development and human evolution’ (Andreotti, V.D.O., 2021b Relating to social and ecological justice and the wellbeing of people and planet Using participatory, action-orientated and inquiry-based learning processes Exploring diverse worldviews and perspectives Practising grounding in the present with opening up possibilities for change (relational, embodied, response-able 2 ) Experiencing ‘struggle’ in different forms (dialogical, selfreflexive, open-ended) Engaging individual and collective agency, action and activism Looking for lifelong and life-wide learning and unlearning. 1 See ‘Co-sensing with Radical Tenderness’, in Machado de Oliveira Andreotti. 2021a 2 See ‘Crossing Borders’ in 2 Depth Education “Depth Education and the Possibility of GCE Otherwise, 2021b. Source: Andreotti, V. 2021a & 2021b., Atif, A. (2025)., Bourn, D. 2021., Bryan. A. and Mochizuki,Y., 2024., Giroux, H.A. 2025., Meade, E. 2025. Whilst engaging in the concept and act of hope more critically reflect upon: What kinds of education for hope might you explore further and why? How might you provide generative spaces for engaging in diverse worldviews and perspectives? In what ways can you facilitate individual and collective agency? How might you support learners’ practice grounding in the present in order to relate differently? In what ways can you support learners in navigating complex root causes and lived realities of local and global issues? As Chief Ninawa Hini Kui affirms, ‘The future depends much less on the images we project ahead than on our capacity to repair relations and build relationships differently in the present.’ (Andreotti et al, 2023: 73. An invitation for further reading: Transformative Learning for a Sustainable Future . d’Abreu, C., Belgeonne, C., Bourn, D. and Hatley, J. (2025) ‘Transformative Learning for a Sustainable Future’. DERC Research Paper 24. London: UCL Institute of Education. Hospicing Modernity: facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism. Machado de Oliveira Andreotti, V. (2021a) ‘Hospicing Modernity: facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism’ , London: Penguin Random House. Development Education and Hope . McCloskey, S. (2025). (ed) ‘Development Education and Hope’. ‘Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review’ , Vol. 41, Autumn. Centre for Global Education, Belfast. Link to and download the full reference list here

I heard it said today by a friend that “You learn a language best when you use it to speak and write about things that are important to you. ”

By Susan Piper • May 6, 2026
This summed up to me about why I volunteer for the Hands Up Project. HUP is a charity trust which, through its network of volunteers, connects children around the world with young people in Palestine. By means of online interaction, drama and storytelling activities, it enables the use of creativity and selfexpression to promote mutual understanding, personal growth, and the development of English language skills. I joined HUP in 2020 during COVID. After going to Palestine in 2017, I wanted to get more involved in working with Palestinian children in schools. HUP gave me the opportunity to link up with schools in the West Bank and Gaza. Every week I’d tell them stories from all over the world, then we’d discuss it, play games and I’d get them to retell it. Sometimes we would work from their coursebook English for Palestine’ in mutual team teaching sessions with their teacher. The simple act of telling a story became much more than entertainment. It became connection, healing, and a bridge to the world beyond their immediate reality to help them improve their language skills, and to give them a platform to speak about their lives in a language that connects them to people everywhere. I loved it, every week, seeing their smiling faces on the screen and building long lasting friendships with their teachers. I even went to Gaza in 2023 and met some of the kids I’d only seen on Zoom. It was a beautiful experience and something I will never forget. As hostilities escalated, I lost contact with everyone. I thought about where the kids were and what had happened to them. As I watched schools being bombed, universities flattened, and people killed in their thousands, I thought about where the kids I’d met were and what was happening to them. I kept in contact with many of the teachers I knew and heard daily news of displacement, destruction, hunger and bombing. Recently, I’ve started to link up again with children in Gaza, and it feels wonderful to be back helping them learn after being denied an education for over two years. Connecting with children in Palestine is more than just words. When a child in Palestine confidently tells their story to someone on the other side of the world, bridges are built, empathy grows, and the world gains a fuller picture of childhood in contexts far from peace and privilege. My work with these children is rooted in the belief that education and voice are inseparable. Through storytelling and English language learning, I witness children not just learning new vocabulary, but reclaiming their narratives, believing in their potential, and finding human connection in a world they perceive has abandoned them. And more than anything, this work reminds us all that children — everywhere — deserve to learn, to speak, and to be heard. Links to HUP information, books and resources: The Hands Up Project BY SUSAN PIPER Susan Piper is currently an ESOL teacher in Oldham, Greater Manchester and has worked in education for over 30 years. She is also a volunteer for the Hands Up Project and is the International Solidarity Officer and President of her NEU district. She believes in quality education for all and aims to make her lessons creative and inclusive so that effective language learning can take place.