Engage with Fellows: Tom Tabori

Tom Tabori FRSA has set up the Legal and Political Development Award (LPDA) with support from RSA Catalyst. Below, Tom sets out the thinking behind the idea and is keen to see if Fellows are able to get involved and lend their skills as they may:

"The LPDA is a curriculum design project, which will provide schools with a ready-made curriculum for teaching citizenship studies. It will also help them build links with their communities. The LPDA gives 14-18 year-olds access in school hours to high calibre CV material and the reflective capacities to apply it in interview, UCAS forms and job applications. It does so through five civic education seminars led by leading professionals in central and local government, the law, economics and international development, followed by the opportunity to design and build a project to address the problem they see to be the biggest in their area, then an interview day reflecting on and applying their new knowledge.

I would like Fellows to help me in four different areas:

1) Fellows with experience as an MP, councillor, lawyer, economist or international development to lead one hour-long school seminar on the students' relationship to that particular emanation of the state: what it is, how it affects their lives, how they can exercise agency in that relationship. You would not need experience at leading seminars, as the teacher will be there to help.

2) Fellows with experience of community organising or project-building, to be applied in the second stage of the LPDA. Here I need people who are able to get students thinking about what is the biggest problem in their area, how they might address that problem, planning how to do so, then carrying it out.

3) Fellows with experience of work in higher education, whether teaching or administration, or experience in interviewing job applicants. This is for the third stage, an interview day where students are asked to reflect on their new knowledge in light of the project just developed and a separate scenario.

4) Fellows able to help coordinate the LPDA's interaction with the increasing number of schools that are adopting the project."

Please contact Tom directly to get in touch about the project. Find out more about SkillsBank.