GFTU BGCM 2019 Minutes

normal channels at school. With the GFTU’s educational programme we have

managed to deliver this programme to 10 schools from the lowest

socioeconomic demographics with, I think, quite a level of success which could

be built on. Political Literacy is the programme that is being delivered and it is

AQA accredited. Political Literacy incorporates media literacy, environmental

literacy, economic literacy and trade unionism and we found that this has

empowered the youth that have taken on this challenge to incorporate an

understanding of the political system within their education and they have

enjoyed every minute of it. I am going to leave you in the capable hands of

Matteo to elaborate.

Just one thing. We are really excited about being able to launch the new

graphic novel on the history of the workers of Great Britain and we feel that this

new medium will be an amazing addition to youth education, so thank you very

much to the GFTU and the educational team. Thank you. (Applause)

MATTEO BERGAMINI: I would like to also just say thank you very much to Alison

from John McDonnell’s office and Doug and the GFTU who have been nothing

but supportive and obviously yourselves as members for this programme.

Just to give you a bit of an understanding about Shout Out UK, we are a youth

network or a social enterprise that tries to get more young people engaged and

involved in politics by running a political literacy programme in secondary

schools across the UK. Just to elaborate on what Alison said around political

literacy, essentially for us a politically literate population means a healthy

democracy and what we mean by that is by having the tools necessary to

engage in our society, to engage in our political system, to change it for

however we see fit for the betterment of the rest of society and that obviously

includes media literacy, being able to critically analyse information. Obviously,

key words like “fake news” and “misinformation” come to mind. Economic

literacy, we want to understand how the economy works, as well as, of course,

trade unionism. At the moment political literacy is a luxury. It is a luxury that

only really exists in not just private schools, but the top end private schools.

Those pupils, those students will have the information they need to shape

139