At yesterday’s inaugural primary schools’ congress are, from the left, Caithlin McCauley, Emily Mills, Deputy Matt Fallaize, Stephanie Crame and Brett Hewlett. (Picture by Adrian Miller, 0579699)
CHILDREN had the opportunity to discuss key issues with deputies at yesterday’s inaugural primary schools’ congress. Pupils from every Guernsey primary and from Alderney gathered at the Peninsula Hotel to talk about issues such as alcohol and tobacco, the environment and bullying.
Those from different schools were mixed and in groups discussed their ideas for solutions to these problems with the deputy assigned to their team. Alun Williams, lifelong learning manager at Education, said the idea for the congress had come after a young people’s survey last year.
‘We wanted to give them an opportunity to meet politicians and share some of their ideas,’ he said. ‘Through the school councils’ structure that we have, we got them to gather the different ideas from their schools and present them to deputies today.’
Ideas put included putting the drinking and smoking age up and reducing speed limits to improve road safety. Mr Williams said the deputies who attended would take away some of the children’s ideas.
‘One of the politicians said how impressed they were with the expertise and knowledge of the children,’ he said.
‘They said they could see an improvement from when they were in school and I think that’s a credit to the young people.’
He added that the congress was such a success that future events seemed certain.
‘What we might look at doing is dealing with particular topics,’ he said.
‘We can see that they are concerned about alcohol and we could use this type of congress to develop the drug and alcohol strategy.’
Hautes Capelles student Emily Lowe, 10, said she had really enjoyed the congress.
‘We talked about smoking and alcohol in my group and how it affects young people,’ she said.
‘We wanted to know if we could raise the age for smoking and drinking. We thought it should be 21 or 22 for both.
‘When you’re 18, you still act a bit silly as a teenager but you would have a bit more time to think whether you want to smoke or drink.’
Sheila Cunningham, Vale Junior School deputy head, was impressed with how the children from different schools had worked together to come up with ideas.
‘They now feel that they have really had input into issues that deputies may be discussing,’ she said.
Deputy Jenny Tasker said she had found the congress very helpful and thought it was important for politicians to be able to discuss issues that concerned young people.
‘They have clearly prepared very well for this and I think it’s very useful to mix them up as they did in different groups so that they could see how young people from other schools were not only considering similar issues, but coming up with similar answers,’ she said.
Article posted on 15th May, 2008 - 11.30am
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