Education: Yes, we have fair bananas … and fair footballs, too: Headteachers who aren’t thinking about global trade issues in school may be shown up by their pupils

Clutching a sheaf of notes, Beth Greenwood, 10, and Phoebe Murray, 11, knock gingerly on the door of their headteacher’s office. After weeks of preparation, zigzagging between powwows in pink-walled bedrooms, the girls’ moment has arrived. They have been granted face-time. Their mission? To create a Fairtrade school.

Jane Goodlace, headteacher at the Queen’s school in Kew, Richmond-upon-Thames, had not known what to expect from the meeting. The girls had come with a proposal and a detailed plan laying out how to take the project further. “They gave me a very professional presentation,” she says. “It was beautifully coordinated. They were word perfect.”

Headteachers take note. Fairtrade Fortnight, which continues this week, is the launchpad for a new, improved scheme to award schools Fairtrade status. It is organised by the Fairtrade Foundation, the charity that licenses and raises awareness of the Fairtrade mark that appears on the products of companies paying above market prices to ensure a better life for farmers and workers in the developing world.

Five criteria

A school committed to fair trade sells and uses fair-trade products as far as it can, and raises awareness of fair trade in the school and the community. Schools must meet five criteria: set up a steering group; write and adopt a fair-trade policy; use fair-trade products in canteens and staffrooms, and sell them at events; learn about fair-trade; and spread the message into the community. Standards are exacting and certificates as coveted as Blue Peter badges. As well as drawing attention to the plight of millions of third world farmers, the scheme can bring alive lessons on global issues and help pupils to build leadership skills, as well as gain national recognition for their school.

Prior to the presentation, Goodlace knew very little about Fairtrade, having only recently noticed the insignia on some coffee she had bought from Marks & Spencer. Now she has given Beth and Phoebe her backing. The idea of “sustainable inter vention - helping people to help themselves” - appealed to her and, in that spirit, she is leaving it to the children involved to take the lead. “My children are extremely good at raising awareness, but then they’ll move on to something else,” she says. “I think if we are able to look at what’s happening and embed it in our curriculum, that will have a much greater impact. These children will not only see this as something that is academic but they will be emotionally committed to it as well.”

The girls are thrilled. After their grilling, a poster went up, a meeting was called and now the group has 18 volunteers - plus an anthem of their own. They got the idea from church, where they help to run a Traidcraft stall selling Fairtrade products. “We want to start selling it elsewhere and make it a less Christian thing,” Beth says. Phoebe chimes in: “It’s about raising awareness.” Now they have a steep hill to climb: to deliver assemblies, arrange a meeting with governors and the catering team, and persuade teachers to drink a Fairtrade cuppa. Their vision is one where the football team plays with Fairtrade balls, breaktime snacks are Fairtrade bananas, and their uniforms are made from Fairtrade cotton.

“It is a lot of extra work,” says Hayley Davies, a geography teacher, who led a group of pupils at the Marlborough school in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, toward converting their school to fair trade. As well as being personally interested, she had taught fair trade as part of GCSEs and A-levels. With the help of sixth-formers, the pupils gave a presentation to the headteacher, governors and catering team. “The thing that took the longest to change was getting Fairtrade products in the canteen,” Davies says. “The biggest concern was cost issues, and the school was heading toward Healthy Schools status.”

The Fairtrade Foundation argues that its products are not necessarily more expensive and, where they are marginally dearer, students are usually happy to pay the difference. In the end, the catering team at Marlborough set up a contract with the local Co-Op to acquire Fairtrade bananas at a discount, and now makes its own cakes using Fairtrade ingredients. Fairtrade flapjacks, cookies and cereal bars went on sale. The vending machine in the staff room sells Fairtrade coffee, tea and hot chocolate; every week there is a Fairtrade tea for staff; pupils host Fairtrade tasting sessions; and art classes are designing Fairtrade motifs.

Questions of justice

According to Lynette Aitken, the Fairtrade Foundation’s schools coordinator: “It’s important to have schools on board because they’re interested in questions of justice and are looking for something concrete they can do - because they are major consumers of the future and because the school curriculum provides lots of opportunities to understand the underlying issues that affect trade and explain why fair trade is important.”

At Calder High, a secondary school in Mytholmroyd, Wales, enterprising pupils from year 9 have set up an ethical trading business, selling Fairtrade snacks at breaktime, with the blessing of the head and a business start-up loan from the school. They employ staff, recruited from the lower school, pay them per session, and take a dividend from the business.

A group of 10 students, aged 11-15, from St Joseph’s Catholic high school in Workington, Cumbria, dipped into their own pockets to set up a Fairtrade tuckshop. “We buy from Traidcraft, get a 10% discount, sell it at catalogue price, and keep the extra,” says the group leader, John Dougan. The canteen now sells Fairtrade juices, bananas and health bars. A stained glass window in the dining hall is to be replaced with one bearing the Fairtrade logo.

Dougan says: “Our head is really into fair trade. He has been hounding us to get status and comes into meetings regularly.” Some of the teachers wear Fairtrade badges and the PE department is buying Fairtrade footballs. The pupils give assemblies, and set up an interview with the news presenter and Fairtrade Foundation patron, George Alagiah.

Goodlace is determined for the project at her school to have longevity. “I thought it would be a great shame to raise awareness for it then to go flat . . . But I believe this is something a bit different,” she says. “They (the organisers in year 6) want to leave a legacy within the school, and talked about it being carried on next year. At this school we’re not going to change the world, but we can create a very small seed.”

Phoebe says clinching the deal with the headteacher was simple: “We persuaded her with some Fairtrade chocolate.”