On Wednesday, teachers went on strike across the country, protesting against various education reforms including pension cuts, and the 60 hour weeks many teachers work due to excessive workload, with further cuts only making this situation worse. While many teachers, lecturers and university students (in earlier strikes) have failed to understand the basic principles of solidarity, some younger students are demonstrating much better comprehension. SchNEWS has a eyewitness account.

On Thursday morning in Brighton a group of around 50 school students from various colleges didn't go to school and went for a demo in Churchill Square instead.

There was no repeat of the 2010 student demo in Brighton (SchNEWS 749) where thousands of rowdy students walked out of school and some attempted to loot the pound shop, but Churchill Square security kept a close eye on the group and told off the journalist that tried to film the students, for little power trip. (SchNote: It isn't illegal to film children in a public place). The only police presence was when a PCSO tried to do some intelligence gathering on the people that started handing out Stop the March for England stickers, but once she realised she wasn't going to get any names she retorted to sulkily writing descriptions of people.

The school students stood around for about 2 hours, beating a drum and shouting the obligatory GOVE OUT chant. There were speeches about how Gove is trying to lengthen the school day and make the holidays shorter, and how the teachers went on strike yesterday so why shouldn't they today.

At one point one of the local street drinkers tried to get involved and seemed to be getting everything going by banging on the drum and shouting "Tory scum" with his can of Stella in one hand, but he broke the atmosphere when he tried to change the chant to "journalist scum" whilst the school students were excitedly getting interviewed and photographed by the Argus and the BBC. That is surely more educational than doing sums!