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This is a difficult thing to be writing, but today is my final day working for Teach the Future. I’m leaving the campaign so that I can have a nice long summer break and make a bit more of my gap year ahead of University next year. Thanks to the skills that I’ve developed whilst working on Teach the Future, I’m going to be doing web design and digital campaigning as a part-time freelancer whilst at Univeristy, you can check out my website here.
I founded this campaign back in 2019, at that point it was just me working away with the support of the staff at SOS-UK. It’s amazing how far we’ve come since then as we have rapidly become a powerful campaign that is genuinely changing education in the UK.
In December 2019 we hit one of our great first milestones - we grew! We had our first bunch of volunteers join and instantly our campaigning improved. This led to us organising a fantastic event in Parliament in February 2019 - where we met with MPs and Peers, persuading many of them to support our campaign. Here I am with Scarlett on BBC Breakfast the day before the reception:
Unfortunately, my first in-person campaign event was also my last as lockdown hit not long after. Many organisations struggled to make it through the difficulties of that first lockdown, but for Teach the Future it was an opportunity to recruit more volunteers, build our online presence and employ our first ever staff members. It was then, in June 2020, that I was hired to work for the campaign 4 days per week, which is what I’ve been doing during my gap year.
It’s been a truly wonderful experience, and so much has happened that I can’t recount it all, so instead, I want to share my 2 top learnings after 2 years as a student campaigner:
From the school strikes, black lives matter movement, and the protests to cancel exams - it’s clear to me that young people can bring about change, but only if we stick together.
During this year I’ve become increasingly aware that the current education system is not fit for purpose - students are being stuffed full of knowledge like exam robots rather than encouraged to become great citizens of our planet.
Finally, I want to say an enormous thank you to everyone I’ve worked with during this time, I’ve learnt so much from all of you. Particular shout outs go to the staff team at SOS-UK, who have supported me taking this campaign from a solo project to a huge initiative - none of it could have happened without them and of course, the amazing volunteers and student staff at Teach the Future, the work they’ve done is simply amazing, especially when juggling school and uni.
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Catch me at https://twitter.com/JoeBrindle_ if you want to see what I’m up to.