Damian Hinds blogspot

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One Day: Holocaust Memorial Day 2022

27 Jan 2022 Today is Holocaust Memorial Day – marking the 77th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration camp. The theme for this year is ‘One Day’ , which can be interpreted in a number of different, but each important, ways. The 27th January is One Day when we come together to remember and to remind ourselves about the horrors wrought by the Holocaust and the genocides that have followed since in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur – in the hope that One Day there may be a future with no genocide. We can also pick One Day to learn about the events that took place on that day and how they shaped history. We could pick the 19th April 1943 – the day the Jewish inhabitants of the Warsaw Ghetto fought back against their Nazi oppressors – or the 17th April 1975 – the day the Khmer Rouge entered the Cambodian capital and began five years of terror. For survivors of the Holocaust and of genocide, One Day often means the point at which everyt

Closing the digital divide: a legacy for lockdown

26 Mar 2021 There is a spark of potential in everyone. At the heart of education is the commitment to help all pupils, whatever their background, realise that potential.   Many things contribute to social mobility: the home environment, early development, character and well-being, careers advice, role models, networks. But it is through education that the biggest differences can be made – and within education, it is all about teachers. That person standing at the front of the room can unlock the chances, and change the life course, of the child.  A central question in social mobility is how best to support great teachers. An increasingly important part of that is how best to deploy technology. During the recent lockdowns, we have come to rely on education technology, or ‘EdTech’, like never before. Learning at a distance – and having to make that change so quickly – has been very challenging for teachers and for parents, as well as for children. But it has also highlighted what EdTe

The green industrial revolution

27 Nov 2020 Green industrial revolution” is a term that we have heard used a great deal in recent years. The Ten Point Plan set out last week now puts that revolution in motion. I know how many local groups and residents here in East Hampshire are passionate about the environment, and this plan marks the start of the UK’s path to net zero by 2050 and provides an important blueprint ahead of the COP26 climate summit that is due to be held in Glasgow next year. It also comes as the UK prepares to co-host the Climate Ambition summit on the 12th December, marking the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement. Covering clean energy, transport, nature and innovative technologies, it is big in scale and ambition, with an aim to create and support up to 250,000 highly-skilled green jobs. It surprises many to hear that the UK is already further advanced compared to other countries on a number of aspects of green energy – an in particular offshore wind deployment. Now there will be a target to

Keeping children safe online

27 Jun 2019 Speech to NSPCC conference Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. Have you ever been in a restaurant where you’ve seen somebody meeting up with old friends and taking a photo of the food in front of them? And it almost seems like the photo of the food is more important than the food itself. Or have you heard a conversation where somebody says, that was a really good walk. It’s just a shame I wasn’t wearing my Fitbit. Or have you ever seen that thing, or even possibly done that thing yourself, standing on the pavement, looking at your weather app, and it says the weather’s fine. And you feel a raindrop on your head, and just for one split second you think, I wonder which one’s right? Well, ladies and gentlemen, if we struggle sometimes with the blurring of reality that we get with technology, imagine how much harder it is for our children. And for kids growing up now, we have come a long way since Photoshop. Now it seems, sometimes that every photo might have some

The changing face of disadvantage

17 Jun 2019 Speech at Reform Thank you very much, Charlotte [Pickles]. Thank you very much to Reform for hosting this morning. Your organisation has a long track record taking on the big issues in public policy. This isn’t in the strictest sense a scripted speech. I think it’s probably fair to say that makes my brilliant civil servants a little nervous this morning, but I’ll still ask them and you to bear with me for the next… Well, we never know exactly how long, but don’t worry, it won’t be too long. I wanted to take the opportunity to draw together some of what we know now that we didn’t know a relatively short time ago, about the nature of disadvantage in education and attainment, and then of course in what happens in later life. Why does this matter? Well, I don’t think you would ask that question, because I think to everybody in this room it is self-evident that in public policy, in government, in what all the organisations represented here do, we should be constantly redoubling