YOUNGSTERS from schools across the borough are getting involved in a campaign for an education that better prepares them life after the classroom.

Members of Bury Youth Council gave their backing for the Curriculum for Life, when they met in the council chamber this evening.

They are getting behind the push for a school experience that puts an emphasis on personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) education, as well as the academic and vocational skills.

Bethanie Mortenson who, together with Viktoria Ouomble, is deputy youth MP to Numair Khalid said: “We want to start driving our campaign forward and start to get ideas, start building on that and bring it into schools.

“A lot of young people feel they are not taught basic life skills because they need and want to learn in schools and colleges, like first aid, student loans and lots of different things.”

“We are starting our campaign to get it into schools so young people are taught the things they want from teachers, maybe one specifically trained in Curriculum for Life, it’s a way of broadening young people to make sure they are equipped for life after education.

Feedback from previous cabinet meetings found that the areas pupils felt it was most important to be educated in included financial awareness, politics, first-aid, better trained teachers and sustainable living.

Members of the youth cabinet indicated which they felt would most benefit youngsters and gave their definitions of what they felt each subject meant, for those who had perhaps not considered it before.

For example one group of youth councillors described financial awareness as “Learning how to apply money to real life situations,”

While politics was defined by another as “The choices that the government makes, and how it effects us every day.”

Numair and and Bethaanie are members of the Great Manchester Youth Combined Authority, which wants to pilot the scheme in one primary and one high school in each local authority in the region.

A questionnaire will be devised and be distributed to young people in the area, and ideas given on the night will fed back to the GMYCA and be used to shape the survey.

Members of the youth cabinet are aged between 11 and 18. Schools represented in the chamber included The Derby, St Gabriel's, Broadoak, St Monica's, Holy Cross, Bury Church and Parrenthorn.

It meets roughly around every six weeks.