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Echo article on recent school visits to Neville Lovett and Portchester Community School
Last Friday, I did a question and answer session with two groups of pupils in schools in Fareham. The first was at Neville Lovett with Years 8 and 10 and the second was at Portchester Community School with members of the school council and the 3R’s group. 3R’s doesn’t mean what you think, but I will explain a little later.
After a heavy week in Westminster, I enjoyed talking to the young people and responding to their questions. They pin you down with questions that get to the heart of the job and your motivation: what are you doing for Fareham, why do you do it, what drives you. They keep you on your toes and draw you back to the point that you are their representative in Westminster and not the other way round.
Both sessions were very good with young people asking some very sharp questions confidently. At Neville Lovett, they asked me about my work as an MP, what got me into politics as well as questions about education. This is a school that is very much on the up and it was good to be able to understand what the pupils wanted to get out of their education and their ambitions for the future.
At Portchester, this was a continuation of a series of meetings I have had with the 3R’s group. What does 3R’s stand for? Rights, respect and responsibilities – it is part a programme developed by UNICEF to based on the UN’s Children’s Charter. 3R’s encourages children to think about their relationship with others and is a programme being rolled out across Hampshire at all schools. (Indeed, it cropped up during my other school visit on Friday to Northern Infant School).
From my experience at Portchester, this concept works. When you turn the tables on the pupils at the school and quiz them about what this means you realise that there is a deep understanding of their relationship with each other, the local community and the wider world. They respect each other much more than they did in the past, for example there is a better understanding between different age groups in the school. In a society, that is increasingly focused on rights, this initiative is to be welcomed as it puts those rights in the context of the responsibilities we have towards other people and the respect we should show. It gives the young people a much better perspective on life and their relationship with other people. From listening carefully to the young people, you realised that they had really embraced this approach and this was being driven through the school’s culture by a partnership between pupils and teachers.
At a time when the media peddle negative stereotypes of our young people, you see a very different picture emerging from these meetings. At both schools, they were thoughtful, perceptive and self-confident. They had a much wider perspective about their lives than you might think. The values they learn at school should stand them in good stead