Teachers should remain impartial on matters of lawbreaking by politicians, says Zahawi

[noblegiraffe]

Nadhim Zahawi, Secretary of State for Education is enraged that a primary school had a writing exercise where Y6s wrote to their MP complaining about the law-breaking by our Prime Minister and other government employees.

He is setting new guidance which requires teachers to provide a balanced representation of opposing opinions on political issues.

But breaking the law isn't a political issue is it? Presenting opposing views on whether the Prime Minister should be allowed to break the law is in direct conflict with our requirement to promote British Values, including respect for the rule of law.

What would he have teachers say? Should teachers shut down discussion on any topic potentially embarrassing to those currently in power?

Where it oversteps is in saying he has broken the law and encouraging all pupils to right to the PM.

Do we know what the teacher has said? Surely the info came from the Newsround programme that they watched - perhaps the government would like to stop children watching the news in schools too. Encouraging letter-writing as a form of persuasive argument with a real issue to get pupil engagement is perfectly reasonable, I'd have thought.

Perhaps an interesting argument to have with secondary pupils would be 'Do we trust the police to investigate fairly and report honestly if the law was broken, given their prior reluctance to investigate 'historic crimes' at all?'

Perhaps an interesting argument to have with secondary pupils would be 'Do we trust the police to investigate fairly and report honestly if the law was broken, given their prior reluctance to investigate 'historic crimes' at all

Or.

The Head of the Metropolitan Police is chosen by the Home Secretary. If the Government breaks the law, do you think the Met police can be impartial?