Cambridge Student Summit – including further education students to debate city’s future

Posted byCambridge Town OwlPosted inUncategorized

The University of Cambridge has promoted this event on the CUSU’s website – please encourage as many as possible to take part.

  • Thursday 18 June 2026
  • 9:30am – 4pm
  • Cambridge Guildhall, Market Hill, Cambridge CB2 3QJ

“The Cambridge Student Summit brings together students from across the city for a free, student‑centred day focused on issues shaping Cambridge. Students from both universities and local sixth‑form colleges will join local leaders and community organisations to discuss the city, its challenges and its future.”

Above – from Cambridge SU

This is something that my generation of 1990 teenagers in/around Cambridge were never encouraged to take part in – ours was a generation that did not have civics or citizenship education. It was only after David Blunkett became Education Secretary in 1997 in the Labour landslide that this was dealt with. (See the digitised copies of citizenship textbooks on the Internet Archive to see what pre-EURef content there was – then think how useful this might have been for adults!)

“What does the draft programme look like?”

See the landing page and scroll down

The only thing they might want to include either at the very start, or as a piece of pre-event watching, is content on:

  • The essentials on the relationship between local government and Westminster (in particular the principle of Parliamentary Sovereignty enabling ministers to make changes to local councils. In other countries local government is constitutionally protected)
  • How Cambridge got to here in terms of its local government structures.

The takeaways from such introductions?

  • Governments have made huge changes on how Cambridge is governed and on the public services provided
  • The current structure dates from 1974, with later governments creating
    • The City Deal / Greater Cambridge Partnership
    • The Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority
  • There is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in how local public services are funded and provided for – it is up to you as individuals to analyse and judge both the current set up and future proposals – and even come up with your own.

And that’s it.

Otherwise the risk is that participants will get bogged down in the detail when what organisers and local politicians want is their active and enthusiastic participation.

I’ve written ***lots*** on how institutions have failed repeatedly on engaging children, teenagers, and young adults

My complaints in blogposts include:

Specific ideas include:

But what I don’t have an insight on is the knowledge or experience of the pressures of being a teenager or young adult in the mid-late 2020s

Which is why the ideas and proposals need to come from them, not me. And that also means enabling the participants to take ownership in identifying the key challenges, scoping the problems, and working up some solutions.

It’s easy to forget that our education system historically has not provided for learners to identify and scope out a problem that they then have to solve. Furthermore, the demands of exam boards and beyond that the politicians means that the institutional focus is on ticking boxes to get marks rather than going beyond the syllabus. And when your future careers are dependent on exam results, who can blame the students?

It’s essential that this event is NOT a one off.

Politicians and institutions need to commit to having this as an annual event, and then commit to expanding it so that a greater number of events across Greater Cambridge, accessible to more teenagers and young adults, can take place. Additionally this could also incorporate issue-specific events – ones that the participants can identify for themselves. What would such events be like if it were the teenagers and students setting the agenda rather than the adults?

Two organisations I also want to highlight are:

  • Form the Future (for all things careers and the future for young people in/around Cambridge)
  • Centre 33 Cambridge (providing independent, free advice and support for teenagers and young adults)

Had my generation been aware of and/or had access to these or similar during my teens in the 1990s I’d like to think we’d have had a better experience of those years. But what I want to avoid is people like me fighting the battles of the last millennium rather than the ones of today. (Even though the past injustices and life experiences are two of my big personal drivers on civic and community action!)

I hope the event is successful and leads to more of them, and generates a new generation of young people getting involved in shaping the future of the city, mindful also of:

I look forward to seeing the results of the event

If you are interested in the longer term future of Cambridge, and on what happens at the local democracy meetings where decisions are made, feel free to: