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Robbie Walks the Corridors of Power

Before the Easter holidays, Year 12 student Robbie spent the day with Special Envoy Helen Grant MP at the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office as part of the Youth Education Council to represent the Send My Friend campaign and discuss challenges and solutions around global education. Here Robbie gives his perspective and insights on the day. 

On Wednesday 20th March, I attended the Foreign Commonwealth & Development Office as part of the Youth Education Council, representing the Send My Friend To School campaign. 

The Youth Education Council is a group of young advocates who are representing charities such as the Global Partnership for Education, World Vision, Save The Children, Plan UK and Send my Friend to School.  

This was our first in-person meeting as a member of the Youth Education Council, having already had two online meetings with this amazing group of people. 

It began with a roundtable conversation with the Prime Minister’s Special Envoy for girls’ education, Helen Grant MP, her private secretary, as well as with her senior civil servant, who showed us their considerable knowledge of the education programmes the UK has been supporting in many different countries across the world. 

Our conversations with Helen Grant were extremely constructive as we managed to ask burning questions to her about how the UK government can sustain funding for international development. We asked her how the most marginalised children can be educated throughout the world. We pushed for a UK government commitment to girls’ education funding to be protected. Currently, the UK’s biggest recipient of the development budget is the UK, being spent on ‘in country’ costs for refugees from other countries, who are now living in the UK. 

I raised the issue of intersectionality and the challenges disabled young people face in developing countries as well as the important global issue of teacher recruitment and retention. 

As part of the Youth Education Council, we are a passionate and talented group of young people from a diverse range of backgrounds, who are now able to campaign inside the Foreign Office directly, instead of being on the outside, relying on politicians' good will to engage with us. 

After the roundtable discussion with Helen Grant we were then taken on a tour of the foreign office. The foreign office has many artefacts of a long-gone and controversial past. One of the most interesting parts of the tour was looking at all the different paintings and statues from Britain's colonial era. These included a statue of Clive of India dressed in the uniform of a Roman Emperor. 

This raised many questions to everyone and even our foreign office tour guide, a former academic with a PhD in History, asked us whether we thought these colonial artefacts should still have pride of place in one of the government's most important buildings. 

After the foreign office tour, we attended a reception to mark 12 years of the Girls Education Challenge (GEC) programme. This funding has supported 41 education projects in 17 countries and has helped over 1.6 million girls into education. The GEC has helped improve many young girls' lives in a range of countries and even though the reception signified the end of the GEC the hope is that more education projects and programmes will follow, with guaranteed funding. 

In 2024, a local and General Election year, we at the Youth Education Council will aim to secure the universal importance of education for all. My hope is that Britain will remain at the forefront of International Development, in education and especially the education of girls.’

Bekah Lucking, Campaign Manager from Send My Friend to School, said “Robbie has been a fantastic advocate for global education since he started his journey as a Campaign Champion in 2021/22. As a representative for Send My Friend to School, he effectively advocated for the prioritising of children with disabilities, and for the global teacher crisis.He is a passionate, articulate campaigner, and we love having both Robbie and other students from Croxley Danes school involved in the campaign and advocating for the learning of every child, everywhere.’

 

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