Teach First Week is an annual event during which distinguished professionals take time out from their day job to teach a lesson in a Teach First school. We were visited by Matthew Taylor, the Chief Executive of The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (The RSA). Mr Taylor was formerly the Chief Advisor on Strategy to the Prime Minister.

In his blog, he had the following to say about his visit:
"I had a great start to the day. As part of a Teach First initiative I was invited to give a lesson to a group of Year 11 students at Cator Park School in Beckenham.  I frequently give lectures, chair events and meet and greet the famous and powerful (today, for example, I welcomed Gordon Brown to the RSA where he was giving a speech to the think tank IPPR about constitutional reform). None of this stopped me being incredibly nervous today.
I had a great hour. The content picked up on a recurrent theme of mine: politics is difficult because we, the people, have complex and often contradictory desires. Having shown the students that they agreed with both the following statements, I got half the class to develop the best argument for the proposition: 
As long as we aren’t breaking the law or hurting anyone else the Government should not interfere with how we run out lives'    
And the other half to defend: 
Government has an important role to play in encouraging us to look after our health, protect the environment and other things we care about as a society'  
I found it fascinating that within fifteen minutes the groups had identified the three classical philosophical arguments for both the libertarian and paternalistic state.     After the lesson I met a group of students who had been involved in the school’s impressive international work. Some had been on exchange trips to Russia, others to help out with a social project in Uganda set up by the teacher whose class I was leading.  If we want some sound advice we could do worse than ask some of the Year 11 students at Cator Park."