Green militants urging your children to skip their lessons
A BAND of veteran militant green activists are fuelling a campaign to encourage thousands of children to skip school.
On Friday, thousands of pupils will walk out of lessons across the country in a mass protest over climate change.
Children as young as nine will be taking part in the day of action – which is being quietly supported by some teachers – while organisers say the strike is the beginning of a wave of youth protests of increasing intensity. They expect ‘several thousand’ to join Friday’s walkout but hope this will rise to tens of thousands of pupils over the next few months.
So far, pupils from more than 40 towns and cities have signed up, including Leeds, Bristol, Oxford, Exeter, Stratford-uponAvon and Winchester. They are planning to leave lessons at 11am and join a number of larger protests which are being held in London, Cardiff and Truro in Cornwall.
But there are concerns that, behind the scenes, the walkouts have been hijacked by hard-line climate groups and career activists. They include Extinction Rebellion, whose roadblocks brought parts of London to a standstill in November and an academic who specialises in ‘empowerment struggles’.
Jake Woodier, a former vegan cafe owner who is helping to organise the walkouts, said: ‘We’ve got over 40 towns and cities which are taking part in the action, and within those towns and cities there are multiple institutes which are going to be taking part.
‘This is the first UK-wide action. Where there’s been the first action in other countries it’s started out fairly small and then escalated quite dramatically.
‘The plan is for students to continue walking out and escalating the campaign to try to get more numbers walking out of class until they’re paid attention to.
‘These are students at schools, colleges and universities. Based on the number of cities and towns we are expecting low thousands [to take part].
‘Just in the past two weeks we’ve seen the number of towns and cities for strike action to take place double from 20 to 40. It’s really spreading fast. We’re getting a lot of interest all the way down from a nine-year-old taking part up to university students.’
Remarkably, the National Association of Head Teachers, which has 28,500 members, initially appeared to be supportive of the strikes. A spokesman said: ‘When you get older pupils making an informed decision, that kind of thing needs to be applauded.
‘A day of activity like this could be an important and valuable life experience.’
However, last night the union tried to row back, saying while it supported the right for young people to express themselves, it did not back them missing lessons.
A second union, the Association of School and College Leaders, also urged pupils not to take part and warned the strikes would cause them to miss out on ‘important learning time’.
Friday’s protests are part of a global movement of walkouts which have been gathering pace in recent months – all sparked by a 16-year-old schoolgirl.
Greta Thunberg, who is Swedish, held a solo strike outside her country’s parliament in Stockholm during August. Since then, protests involving thousands of young people have taken place in Germany, France, Switzerland, Netherlands and Australia.
This week’s walkout is being described as a warm-up for a much larger protest on March 15, to coincide with action in other countries. This is being largely organised through social media and is expected to involve schools in Australia, Belgium and Switzerland as well as the UK.
But Chris McGovern, of the Campaign For Real Education, said: ‘I’m pleased children are learning about the environment, and no way would we criticise that, but this is politicising education. It’s taking children out on to the streets.
‘The schools themselves have become politicised in a very strong Left-leaning direction. A lot of teachers are passively endorsing this Left-wing activism. It’s very obvious that teachers are turning the other way. At the very least they are passively giving encouragement to it.’
Westminster’s Department for Education said it was a matter for individual schools. But it stressed pupils could take time off only in ‘exceptional circumstances’ when authorised by a head teacher.
A spokesman for the National Association of Head Teachers said: ‘There is no reason why a young person’s desire to get involved in social issues should get in the way of their schooling.
‘While it will be for individual school leaders to decide how best to respond to any proposed protest, few would condone young people missing out on education as a consequence.’
Neither the National Union of Teachers nor NASUWT, another major teaching union, would give their position on the strikes.
However, a Scottish Government spokesman said: ‘We believe climate change is an extremely serious issue, but we do not encourage absence from school during term time.’
Last night, Douglas Rogers. of Extinction Rebellion, confirmed the group was offering advice to the student protesters.
‘We support it but are not directly related,’ he said.
‘We are a separate movement but we absolutely share their goals and think it’s really important that people act in whatever way they can.’