Shonagh Reid is an equity, diversity and inclusion consultant supporting
organisations to create a truly inclusive working environment.
‘When we let children leave lessons we devalue education’. Are we missing the point?
Recently in the UK, there has been a discussion on twitter about whether or not students should be allowed to leave the classroom once a lesson has started. Some assert that letting a child out of a classroom implies that the education in the classroom is not valued highly enough. To paraphrase, ‘students need to know that the lesson is vital, therefore they have to remain in it’. The conversation then moved on to behaviour of students, specifically the idea that students leaving classrooms may engage in graffiti, vaping and smoking in the toilets. Onward, to the lack of support from school leaders who promote poor behaviour by not dealing with it strongly enough.
As someone who has been an Assistant Principal for Behaviour and Attitudes, I fully understand the importance of boundaries and structure for young people to learn in. Indeed, for some children school can be their safe space. Order and calm is essential for them. We know from a range of different sources such as Teacher Tapp and articles in the TES, that poor behaviour is often cited as the reason for poor retention of staff.
I can simultaneously hold the belief that order, structure and calm are necessary for good learning to take place, and that young people can generally be trusted to take ownership of that learning and their own bodies.
Young people are well aware that their education is vital. I think they know this too well and feel pressured. When I was at school, the world was a significantly different place. Education was different. Industries and jobs were very different. Societal pressures were very different and social media didn’t exist. Technology is moving apace, and the jobs of the future don’t exist yet. So why are we so confident that our current ways of teaching and learning are suitable for today’s learners.
Our education system is largely unchanged since the Victorian era. The world, however is completely different. This view that learning has to take place in a classroom, with everyone facing forward, in the quiet is not in tune with our modern lives or modern ways of work. I work with organisations who are purposefully giving staff more agency and trust. They support staff to take breaks when they need to and trust them to get the work done to a high standard. They support flexible working. They are working to challenge discrimination. They listen to staff to create a comfortable working environment because they know that this is key to retention and productivity. Education doesn’t seem to be anywhere near this, and more importantly, it isn’t preparing young people for this way of working.
What about staff? Post covid the world is changing and teachers continue to vote with their feet choosing different career paths which are more in tune with modern life and reasonable expectations of a person’s stress and work levels. What are we really doing to make education an attractive work environment (note I didn’t say career)? Teachers expect more.
As the exchange on Twitter implies, we are not tolerant. We can’t understand that a young person may need to take breaks from pressure. We don’t seem ready to understand that trauma exists, that this might be a factor in a child’s response to what is happening to them and the stressful environment they are in. There continues to be a failure to recognise protected characteristics and the specific challenges these bring to all stakeholders.
What if we were able to create a flexible education system which prepares young people for modern ways of working? What if we replicated those ways of working to meet the needs of teachers? Are we making our young people culturally aware so that they can excel in international collaboration that hybrid working has encouraged?
If we look at the etymology of the word, ‘educate’, we might want to reflect on: to what extent we are leading our young people and showing them the way? How are we revealing the outside world to them? How are we nurturing and supporting them? Are we looking after their minds? Do we promote intellectual and cultural development?
This article first appeared in Engage 27.
BY SHONAGH REID • April 15, 2024
On Friday evening ( 29 May, 7.00 pm The Actors Church Covent Garden) we had the pleasure of listening to this very special concert, bringing together the Choir of King's College London and the Princeton High School Orchestra in a celebration of international friendship, collaboration, and shared values. This project reflects a commitment to peace, sustainability, equality, and cultural exchange, uniting young musicians from the United Kingdom and the United States through the universal language of music.
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.
‘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
