Taking Action with the real David Cameron and Willie French, Chair of Upstart Scotland

Upstart Scotland - https://upstart.scot/ - is a remarkable organisation. Here's the link to a very old video by way of introduction https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMaxhELpG7I. It takes a special campaign to bring together academics, writers, educationalists, forest schoolers and police, but Upstart does that and more  It has engaged parents and politicians and built partnerships to attempt to establish a Kindergarten stage and a later start to formal education in Scotland. What it hasn't managed to do is to make that change a reality and we hope that listeners will go online and sign their  petition to the Scottish Parliament. You can hear Willie talk about that in the podcast. 

What Willie also manages to do is to place the campaign in context. It is not simply about a structural change in education. It is about building resilience and agency in our children. It recognises the pace of change in our wider society which Willie likens to a speeding bullet train while change in education barely keeps pace with Stephenson's Rocket, which, as almost everyone will know, is an original train with no resemblance to a rocket. It recognises the loss of childhood, the mental health crisis and more. It is a wide-ranging discussion and an important one for all of us.