Visit of Nadhim Zahawi to Salford Priors CofE Academy

Last week, Nadhim Zahawi, the Secretary of State for Education, visited Salford Priors CofE Academy in response to school's children writing letters to him (pre-pandemic) about their environmental concerns. In preparation for this rescheduled visit, the children completed a unit of work about democracy and law-making in the UK. During his visit, he met with all KS2 pupils, Mrs Mingay, the class teacher who had initiated the letter writing and Mrs Dhugga, Headteacher.

Left to right – Mrs L Mingay (KS2 class teacher), Mr E Smith (PE & Sports Coach), Mrs L Baddeley (Academy Improvement Partner), Mr N Zahawi, Y6 pupil, Y6 pupil, Mrs P Dhugga (Headteacher), Mr M Cowland (CEO Diocese of Coventry MAT), Mrs A Gold (Diocesan Director of Education).

Here is an account of the visit, written by two of Salford Priors CofE Academy Year 5 children:

When Mr. Zahawi came to our school, he told us about parliament and we asked him questions about a variety of issues, including how democracy was created (by the Ancient Greeks). When we asked him more questions, he couldn’t answer one of them. The question was “How old is the Old Bailey?”, but we were able to find the answer - 349 years old! Before that, we asked the question, “How old is the House of Commons?” It is 750 years old, so it is 401 years older than the Old Bailey. The Old Bailey and the House of Commons are very old so they must be very fragile and delicate. But since the House of Commons is older, the building would have had lots of modern repairs.

We were allowed to ask him questions about his job as the Secretary of State for Education. One of the questions was, “How much money do MPs make?” and he said that they make around £80,000 a year. Every time a law is made, it has to be passed by the House of Lords. He also told us about the political party and said, “We are in the blue party.”

He talked to us about how to become a MP. You need good grades in English, Maths and History. Then he talked about what an MP does for a job and what it’s like to be an MP. It’s unbelievable what MPs do - they make sure that schools in the country are suitable and, if schools aren’t safe, they can take action to help the school to be a safe place to learn. MPs do tricky, but fantastic, work although they have a complex routine in the morning and the night-time. They wake up at 5am or 6am to read papers that were given to them and when they have finished reading the paper, they go off to the MP house where they talk about what to do.

After Mr. Zahawi left the classroom, two of my classmates showed him around the school; they told me that he was very interested in the environment and pollution. He was also delighted to meet our academic mentor from the NTP, Miss Cussen, commenting that he thinks academic mentors are a really good resource for schools.