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Roots Futures

Student Blog London Final

Student Blog: Stepping Outside the Bubble – What Roots Taught Me About Education and Community

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As part of our Roots Futures programme, Elisabeth took part in a school exchange that opened her eyes to new perspectives on education and community. Here, she shares her reflections in her own words.

 

What made me join the Roots programme was it gave me a chance to express myself and to see how the education system differs between 2 very different schools. As someone who is neurodiverse and has constantly struggled with academics and has always needed and been given support, the education system to me is such a vital part of my life, I have seen some of its failures and success, and have realised that it is such a powerful component in influencing our future, whether we will succeed or fail in life. 

Through Roots, I am able to connect with other people my age, who have also experienced difficulties in their education due to other reasons such as the different quality of education they get. And that is what first hit me, the class divide, the differences in the quality of education we received. I see more clearly now, the privilege I have to be able to go to an Independent school, where we have more freedom and choice, whether it is the ability to choose our A-levels no matter how small the class sizes would be, it could be as small as 7 pupils in one class. It has also made me greatly appreciate all my teachers and the level of support and time they are able to give me in my studies. 

The exchange in actionBy visiting the other school, it made me realise just how separate my school is from the rest of society, it is in its own bubble, where students don’t experience the realities of the world and where there is no strong sense of community. While the state school had a stronger sense of community between the students. Where their community bond goes through the entire school, not just one year group. It made me realise just how important community is, but also about the education system and how across class divide the education people get is completely different. The programme made me more aware of the privileges I have when it comes to the education system. Throughout my entire school life, I have gone to private schools and this programme gave me the opportunity to see just a glimpse of what a state school is like, to experience the environment and to meet and connect with other students, that if not for this programme I would have never crossed paths with. 

For me, this programme has given me the ability not to be afraid to voice my opinions and gave me the confidence to contribute much more to the discussion than before. It has also given me the drive to get out of my bubble and partake in other external activities that without this I wouldn’t have the confidence to do. 

The UK education system is not perfect, no education system is perfect and none will ever be, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have to change. It does! Education is necessary, a good education is vital. To make good change, to make progress in society we need education, we need an education system where every student can get what they need from it, they have the support, the access and the resources they need in order to accomplish their dreams. We need an education system that cares.

The programme gave me the chance to have in-depth discussions about things that otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to do and to try to find the solutions for. Whilst people found the programme very impactful in many different ways at 16 and 17 years old, I believe that it could have been much more impactful at a younger age, such as 14 or 15 years old, when they are not stressing so much about A-levels and juggling these with the programme. I believe that for younger years, they would appreciate this opportunity more and hopefully be inspired to continue to make positive change in their community and the wider world. 

Roots has given me hope that there are other people out there, no matter their background, who see the inequalities and unfairness of the education system and many other issues in society and want to do something about it.

Voices Across The Divide Mnchester (3)

Student Blog: Reflections on Roots Futures London Exchange from state school pupil Kieran

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I remember sitting in an assembly being told about the Roots Futures Programme thinking, “Oh this will probably be another boring assembly about something I don’t care about.” But I was wrong, this programme turned out to be exactly what I was looking for, it suited my background very well.

I’m currently studying Psychology, Sociology and Medical Science at Park Academy West London. In my spare time, I do Taekwondo. I am a 2nd dan black belt and also a teacher of the sport. I teach the age range of 4 year olds, to the oldest I’ve taught, 50 years old. Throughout my time teaching I’ve taught several different types of people, of different ages, races, genders and classes, so I get to see a lot of different people’s mindsets and behaviours. But throughout my 5 years of teaching I’ve actually never met a private school young person, this programme gave me the chance to change that.

When I started the programme, I was at first quite nervous. I’ve very much got a set lifestyle, can be quite nervous about doing new things and I had some misconceptions about the lifestyle of private school children that also weren’t helping. For example, I expected all the children to be posh, with incredibly rich parents, but I was quickly proven wrong. The students of our partner private school led relatively normal lives, only it seemed to me that in some ways they were much more fortunate than the majority of the country, causing them to be able to spend money on luxuries like a private school.

My favourite day was our visit to our partner private school, as I got to see the campus and get a sense of the lifestyle. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience and I even got to meet the principal. I was also able to ask him multiple questions, which he kindly answered! I also got the chance to ask some of the students questions, such as ‘do they feel disconnected from society because their schooling is being done privately?’. The majority of students said ‘yes’ to this question.

Kieran with one of his school exchange partners, Elisabeth

Another particularly interesting moment was when the young people from our partner private school came to our school for a visit, I got to see their young people’s reaction to our school. They found our school to be very busy, with a large number of classrooms and a lot of students all fit into just one building, whereas their school has fewer students, but with multiple buildings and campuses.

I have been reflecting on a couple of the key things that I have taken away individually from this experience. Firstly, it changed my mentality towards private school students and their lives. My assumptions of what a private school student’s life was like changed. I used to believe that they were sort of inhuman, but I now see them as more likeable figures, with many chances that they should embrace. 

Secondly, I realised how much of an advantage private school children can have over state school children, due to financial wealth, smaller class sizes (anecdotally the biggest class I saw was around 8-10, compared to our classes of 30) and access to resources (for example, I even saw a Forge at the private school!). There were of course also other resources much more similar to ours, but the amount of money put into it was evidently quite different. 

As a group, something that we took away was that we learned about ourselves and our strengths. We learned that we have quite a strong sense of community in our school. At our state school, it feels like we make a great effort to speak to, include and get along with each other. Comparatively, at our partner private school friendship groups seemed much more separate from each other and appeared to struggle more with this aspect.

This experience has shaped some of my beliefs and hopes for our future. I hope that one day my state school will have the amount of financial support that many private schools have, with a similar amount of opportunities such as visiting multiple countries like Poland, Belgium etc (as those at our partner private school did). I now believe that private school institutions could support these changes by investing more money into their local areas and schools, which are less financially fortunate, to give other children outside of their school community an opportunity that they wouldn’t have due to lack of funding. 

My big dream for our society is that one day all schools will have the funding that our partner private school does, with an equal amount of opportunities given to all young people, no matter race, gender, class or wealth. One way this could be done is through better government funding, as not all parents are equally financially fortunate. I hope the private school system becomes more involved with the state school system and we can all live in one society, without any limitations.

I hope this experience gives young people a new point of view and can change our perception of society to help create a better and brighter future in education, as it did for me. I’m still in contact with some of the people from the other school including Elizabeth! I’ve made some actual friends from it and I’m very happy I signed up

Thank you to all who made this opportunity possible and I hope to be able to do something similar again.