Long Road Sixth Form students enjoy a visit from Lord Balfe under outreach programme Learn with the Lords

Long Road Sixth Form College received a visit from Lord Balfe, a member of the House of Lords, as part of a UK Parliament outreach programme called Learn with the Lords.

Meetings normally take place online but when Gavin Sheffield, head of politics at the Cambridge school, applied, he was offered an in-person visit – “which is really, really unusual,” he noted.

“Obviously we jumped at the chance to do it,” continued Gavin. “And Lord Balfe chose to take part in it.

“The plan was that he was going to come up and talk to the students, and they were going to get the chance to question him on anything that they felt was appropriate, as well as listen to him talk about how the House of Lords works, what the role is and how it functions, in terms of its position in making laws and everything else.”

Gavin says that the students’ gave a positive reaction to the two-hour visit on Friday, 20 September, adding: “The advantage of having a House of Lords member is that they speak their minds.

“They do have political parties but they don’t have to worry about what they say in terms of that, so he was open with his views on various issues, particularly the war in Ukraine and Brexit.

“I think they responded to it quite positively,” he said, adding that they soon warmed to the chance to question Lord Balfe.

Gavin noted that after the visit, a lot of students remarked at how surprised they were at how open their visitor was.

“There was never any element of speaking down to them,” he said.

The occasion marked the first time that students at Long Road and The Sixth Form College Colchester – now both part of the The Sixth Form Colleges Trust – came together.