LEAVE POLITICS AT THE GATE

THE letter from Darryl Ashton who paints a bleak picture of our education system (Your Views March 4) resonated with me as a former primary school governor.

It is quite depressing that the Education Sec. Nadhim Zahawi has recently been obliged to remind teachers their role is to educate, not indoctrinate their pupils.

He has introduced a directive to prevent teachers from indoctrinating children on politically charged topics such as BLM; the misgivings of the British Empire and the Israel Palestine conflict.

Branding Winston Churchill, a national hero and statesman, as a racist in my book is totally unacceptable.

Left wing dogma and ideology is creeping into our classrooms at the expense of actual knowledge.

A recent wokeinspired union backed training exercise recommended that children should stop saying ‘Mr’ or ‘Mrs’ and instead refer to staff as ‘teacher’ to encourage schools to be gender free!

Four Brighton schools are replacing ‘mum’ and ‘dad’ with ‘grown ups’ to prevent offending non traditional families!

Closer to home Barrowford Primary School has banned meat from its canteen, asking parents to consider ‘meat-free’ options in packed lunches to reduce carbon emissions.

The 3Rs has gone by the wayside.

But surely the focus of schools should be to concentrate on behaviour, education and intellectual development of the children who are in their care?

There are many superb teachers out there who spend their working lives pushing up standards and who I suspect agree with me that political bias should be left at the school gates.

These are difficult times for our kids who are playing catch up following the Covid school closures.

It is therefore important that they are taught in a balanced and factual manner allowing them to absorb the issues and think critically.