What is your favourite work of art?

Since I was 11, mine has been John William Waterhouse’s ‘The Lady of Shalott. I saw it for the first time on my only visit to London as a child. My family didn’t live in the Outer Hebrides or anything, but our budget didn’t stretch to days out and city breaks in the capital. That day was the first time I’d been on a train. I didn’t visit London again until I was working full-time as a teacher and I went to see a play at the Old Vic with my colleagues.

When we consider what young people in our schools do in their spare time, we can judge through the lens of our own privileges. I remember a particularly painful conversation with a colleague in my teacher training year, who bemoaned that the young people we were teaching “have no aspirations, some of them have never even been to London.” We should never confuse a child’s material circumstances with their aspirations: the two are not the same. We should never devalue or diminish the things that young people are able to do in their spare time. Whilst I didn’t spend my childhood in museums and art galleries, I read six books a week from my local library.

Schools should build bridges between the cultural practices our young people are familiar with and those that are unfamiliar to them – without judgement or admonishment. I’m lucky that I’ve been able to take my son to visit museums, galleries and theatres across the UK and further afield, but this does not make me a better parent than my own parents were, saving up for those train tickets to take us to the Tate gallery that day. In my own teaching career, I always prioritised extra-curricular opportunities for our young people – from visits to the RSC at Stratford-upon-Avon and the Cheltenham Literature Festival to creative writing societies and a philosophy club that I jointly ran with sixth-form students. Every young person brings key aspects of their own life experiences and backgrounds to these extra-curricular activities and it’s our job – as educators – to value these and connect them to art, culture and society more broadly.