The National Education Union (the largest education union in the UK) has advised teachers with a list of disruptive ideas to help children skip school and protest against climate change. They include dropping the curriculum, setting off fire alarms, sending pupils to protests…

Many members have already had meetings and met with school leadership teams to agree action on [Friday]. These are lots of things that are already planned to coincide with the action. For instance, in Doncaster the council have asked schools to set off alarms to illustrate the climate emergency. Here are some ideas that you can use to organise action in your school:

• Get the whole school to take action for 30 minutes by demonstrating in the playground.

• Drop the curriculum for the day or part of it and teach environmental and ecological issues.

• Take an assembly on the climate emergency.

• Encourage meetings of student eco-committees. 

• Organise a live link with protests taking place in city centres.

• Organise your own protest in the playground or at the school gates.  

• Send a delegation to the climate change protests.

• Hold inset days with focus on climate and an opportunity for staff to attend protests.

When teachers are advising students to bunk off lessons something is very wrong…