With a theatrical display of disgust, a former head of year always used to begin his customary assembly on litter by showing the young audience a discarded Mars Bar wrapper. He would stretch out an arm and dangle it disdainfully between thumb and forefinger. 

“Look at this! I’ve just picked this up off the playground on my way over here,” he always claimed, even though colleagues around the hall had just seen him happily scoffing it down in the staffroom. 

How we used to mock that litter assembly. The theme seemed so remote from the statutory “collective act of daily worship”, unless we include the god Mars. That dour tirade also seemed so remote from anything that could conceivably inspire or enrich any of the hungry young minds gathered there.

Collective worship and taking a stand against litter

For too long I have continued to believe that his and everyone else’s litter assemblies were, well, absolute rubbish. I have regarded the litter speech (along with other diatribes on “uniform”) as just an easy standby, a ritual that everyone in school must occasionally sit through, a cue for those gathered to switch off for a few minutes. 

However, following those recent depressing scenes of discarded rubbish in parks, and the evident increase in things being casually tossed out of car windows, I realise that I have been wrong to have been so disparaging all these years. Those who have stood up in assemblies and fought the good fight against littering have been absolutely right all along.

Maybe schools minister Nick Gibb’s sudden determination to resurrect daily collective acts of worship may mean even more Mars Bar wrapper talks about litter - and that may not be an entirely bad thing. Even the prime minister recently felt moved to deliver what was effectively a head’s assembly on the matter, calling upon us all to take a stand whenever we catch any miscreants in the act.  

But it needs to go beyond mere assemblies. Litter needs to be an ongoing issue addressed in school. Many social problems are thrown pointlessly the way of teachers, but this time it is surely one where we really can make a significant difference.

The difference one teacher can make

I, for one, know that there is one simple reason why I have never dropped any litter since my infancy: my primary teacher at the time, Mrs MacLeod. 

After hearing her loud and withering admonishment when someone dropped a few orange peels in “her” playground, I soon learned to adhere to the required bin-using routine without even thinking about it. I suspect most people in that playground would say similar. 

Ever since that poor boy’s comeuppance, I have never even thought to leave any litter. As with so much training, the occasional surprise verbal severity helps in those early formative stages. 

And the litter issue is surely the perfect way for helping all young children to begin to understand their own influence on those other more serious global environmental issues.

In particular, littering shows them so visually how each individual person’s small act of thoughtlessness can cause something collectively horrendous. Conversely, it also shows how every individual caring and making the right decision can make our world and our environment so much better. 

I know teachers who already spend much of their day delivering that very message to their classes.  But maybe not enough of us do it, or not often enough. 

Stephen Petty is head of humanities at Lord Williams’s School in Thame, Oxfordshire