THE Tories are to impose new rules on teachers following a row over schoolchildren criticising Boris Johnson.
Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi said he would bring forward guidance to ensure teaching is “balanced” after English schoolchildren sent a letter to the local MP about the Prime Minister’s Covid rule-breaking.
The planned intervention follows Conservative outrage after pupils at Welbeck Primary School in Nottingham looked at partygate as part of class.
The young students were shown an episode of the BBC’s Newsround covering the scandal, and then told to put their opinion into letters.
READ MORE: Boris Johnson attempting to 'wriggle off the hook' with partygate defence
After students decided that Boris Johnson should resign, a Tory MP from a different constituency expressed his outrage.
"It is very overtly political and it is very, very one-sided and the letters do not look like they have been written by 10-year-olds,” Brendan Clarke-Smith claimed.
The school’s headteacher, Rebecca Gittins, said that a social media post about the class had to be taken down after “abusive” responses.
Rebecca Gittins said: “There is no ‘teaching’ of politics. We explain processes and structure, with the children encouraged to express their thoughts.
“Year Six pupils watched recent coverage on Newsround about Downing Street and some of them asked to write to their local MP to share their views.”
In the wake of the story, Education Secretary Zahawi said that schools should not be encouraging pupils to “pin their colours to a political mast”.
Although details are not yet forthcoming, the top Tory suggested areas such as racism and the legacy of the British empire would be contentious issues which they would look to control debate around.
Zahawi said that the guidance will make clear “the requirement for teachers to make a balanced presentation of opposing views on political issues, so that the complexity of many of these important questions is understood”.
Labour’s shadow schools minister, Stephen Morgan, said: “I wish the Education Secretary were as devoted to ensuring our children get the ambitious pandemic recovery plan they need and deserve as he is to defending the Prime Minister.
“As has become the norm with this Conservative government, what’s occupying the mind of the Secretary of State is far from what’s keeping parents up at night.”
Education is devolved, so Tory guidance to teachers will only be relevant in England.
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