Student protests: pupil walkouts staged across Britain

[Joanne98]

Schoolchildren join clamour against tuition fees and take placards to the streets

It was the number of placards bearing references to Harry Potter that gave the game away. "Now we can't afford to go to Hogwarts", read one. "David Cameron is Voldemort," suggested another.

Of course the veterans of these sort of demonstrations were here: student union representatives, political activists, leftwing teachers, anarchists and stalwarts of the Socialist Workers party.

But a large, excited, very vocal percentage were schoolchildren, some as young as 13 or 14, who had piled out of lessons and joined the clamour against increases in tuition fees and the loss of education maintenance allowances.

"It's great," said Sophie, who walked out of her school in south Bristol to join the protest in the city centre and did not intend to return that day. "I'm having a wicked time. I feel strongly that what the government is doing is wrong and I wanted to come out of here and express that."

She said she had no regrets about leaving her lessons. "The teachers couldn't say it but you could tell they supported us too. And I had permission from my parents."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/nov/24/tuition-fees-protest