Brighton & Hove environmental education

MPs Climate Emergency Question Time

19th January 2021 Written by Katie

12th February 2021 from 11am-12pm via Zoom

We are delighted that our 3 local MPs, Caroline Lucas, Lloyd Russell-Moyle and Peter Kyle, along with Samer Bagaeen, a Conservative councillor, have agreed to ‘meet’ local secondary students online for a Climate Emergency Q&A on 12th February 2021 from 11am-12pm via Zoom.

The Fridays for Future student climate strikes through 2019/20 have shown how much the climate and biodiversity emergency matters to young people in the city. The pandemic has halted these strikes but their concern continues. This event will give students an opportunity to further explore this important issue and find out what their local representatives are doing to progress this agenda nationally.

Secondary schools are invited to work with students to devise and submit questions in advance (1st February) and to select 3 students to attend the event on the day (12th February). Full details are below.

This event is being organised by community activist volunteers in partnership with BHee and the city’s PHSE network. To get your school involved, please contact Katie

Key dates for your diary:

● Expressions of interest from school beginning from 18th January

● Questions from schools and names of students submitted to event organisers 1st February

● All event details, including information on which questions are going to be included, event running order, and links to join the event will be provided to schools by 5th February

● Conformation of parental / carer permission sent to organisers by 8th February

How to take part:

● All state funded secondary schools (excluding special schools) in Brighton and Hove are being invited to take part through BHee and PSHE network.

● We invite you to send us up to 5 questions from students in your school to potentially be included in the question time with MPs and councillor Bagaeen. (Please do this by 1st February). We will choose one question from each school – ensuring that a wide range of topics get covered.

● Each school will also be invited to choose three students to take part in the question time session. We’d like to ensure a diversity of views and experiences are included. We’ll support students to ask their questions – and they don’t have to show their face on the camera if they don’t want to.

● You can use the materials provided below as a resource for having a conversation with your students relating to climate and ecological emergency to introduce the topic and stimulate conversation and questions e.g. assembly, tutor time, PSHE content, other curriculum lessons, SMSC, student council etc.

● As this is an online event (happening on Zoom) and being recorded to share online and possibly at future council events, you will need to gather parental permission for students to take part ahead of time. (Full details below).

● We would really appreciate the opportunity to hear from young people afterwards about how they found the event and what they think about the questions and answers. We will invite all students to submit a short video (recorded on their own devices) giving us feedback and sharing their thoughts. More information will be given at the end of the event.

Resources to help plan a lesson, meeting or assembly about this topic and event

Exploring the Climate and Biodiversity Emergency:

BBC iPlayer Resources

Climate Assemblies – local and national responses

Climate assemblies are a new way of ensuring views of a wide section of the population are heard and used to come up with workable solutions to addressing the climate emergency. This is something that has recently taken place on a national and local level.

Additional Climate Teaching Resources

Parental permissions – platform and how we’ll use recording

  • The event will be hosted on Zoom
  • We expect there will be between 30 and 40 people involved in the meeting (c. 30 students / teachers, 4 panel members, 2 hosts and c.3 or 4 organisers)
  • Everyone will be encouraged to have cameras on but it will not be obligatory to take part in the event
  • Students will display first name only (doesn’t have to be real name)
  • We’ll record the event – and ensure that any mention of full names or personal details are removed in editing
  • The recording may be used in public domain in following ways:
    • Shared with schools in the city as a useful resource
    • Shared at BHEE / BHCC events – eg Head Teachers Conference on climate emergency
    • Added to Youtube so it’s accessible in the public domain but with comments closed
    • Promoted via relevant social media channels and newsletters (eg BHEE, Living Coast)

More about the event

  • The event will be hosted by two moderators – a teacher and young person.
  • There is space for up to 3 students from each school at the event.
  • There is also space for a member of staff to join from the each school if they would like to.
  • Each school will have the opportunity to ask a question – students will ask the questions live in the session.
  • Each MP/councillor will have time to answer the question (likely to be limited to around a minute for each answer).
  • If possible, we will make space for follow up questions from the schools – via moderator interaction.
  • MPs/councillor will have opportunity to ask questions of the young people in return by using the Zoom poll tool.
  • We would be very interested to hear from you after the event to understand how you engaged with the subject at your school and whether opinions changed through the process.

What will happen after the event?

  • We will share the recording of the event to schools in Brighton & Hove along with supporting materials for use in class.
  • If students and teachers share contact details (e.g. emails) we will continue to communicate with you about the topic.
  • We plan to share the recording at an event for head teachers hosted by Brighton Council in March 2021 ‘A whole school, whole city approach to climate action’.
  • There may be the opportunity for follow up events if there is interest:
    • MPs asking questions of students
    • Event for special schools
    • Event for FE colleges / universities
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