Big Issues

Big Issues at Mere Green are exactly that. They are the big issues that we believe are important for our children to learn about. They are issues that are affecting our local community, affecting us nationally or affecting us globally. These issues are ones that are not planned months in advance, but instead planned quickly to respond to the needs of the children.

We want our children at Mere Green to be active citizens for the future. We want them to have an awareness of current issues and have an opinion on them. Having a voice is key. We aim to nurture children who will go on and be active citizens and this means, children and young people who have an opinion on current affairs and are able to know how to make a change, no matter how small.

With the growing Afghanistan Refugee crisis in 2021, we became aware that children were clearly hearing the news or conversations at home and wanted to know more, wanted to fully understand the issues. This is where our Big Issues came about as, whilst our PSHE and citizenship curriculum addresses important issues such as how parliament and the justice system works or about stereotypes in the workplace, these units of work were not always reflecting what was going on in society here and now. Big Issues are launched termly to focus on an issue that we know that the children want addressing.