The framework brings together what learners should know about Grenfell and what they should be able to do. Its starting point is the dignity, experience and knowledge of the people affected.
Six capacities for ethical practice and active citizenship, shown in the outer ring.
A framework to interpret and adapt
Use these curricular principles to inform teaching that fits your learners, subject and context. They provide a guiding model, rather than a ready-made curriculum or a fixed sequence of lessons.
Begin with the people for whom Grenfell Tower was home: their everyday lives, relationships and community. Understanding what was lost provides the human and ethical context for examining the disaster and its causes.
This domain connects life before the fire, its continuing human impact and the solidarity through which people supported one another. Community members’ accounts challenge both impersonal statistics and stereotypes about the residents.
Understand how decisions, institutions and social inequalities made the disaster possible. The framework connects established facts about the fire with the corporate and regulatory choices behind it, residents’ ignored warnings and the continuing pursuit of justice.
Community perspectives establish why these issues matter educationally; the paper also draws on the Grenfell Tower Inquiry to ground its account of institutional failures. Together, these sources support an understanding of preventability, responsibility and accountability.
Connect understanding with ethical practice and active citizenship. The outer ring identifies six capacities that help learners recognise injustice, respond to other people and challenge the conditions through which preventable disasters occur.
Decision making and professional ethics sit alongside empathy, active listening, community action and critical media literacy. These capacities connect the human story with the analysis of systemic failures and give learning a future-oriented purpose.
Grenfell Tower was a cherished home and a vibrant, multicultural community. Teaching should make space for residents’ positive memories, friendships, family life and pride in their homes.
These accounts challenge portrayals of the tower as simply a place of poverty or despair. Recognising the diversity and value of everyday life helps learners understand what was lost, before they examine the disaster itself.
“We had a really nice period as a family … We were growing up, and we’ve got amazing memories of going to that tower and being a family”
Remember the 72 people who died and recognise the profound effects on survivors, bereaved families and the wider community. Loss includes relationships, homes and a sense of safety, with consequences that extend far beyond the night of the fire.
Individual experiences differ, while grief and trauma also have a collective dimension. Learning should acknowledge that suffering is ongoing and that support, recognition and justice remain connected.
“This loss, this pain, is never-ending, and you should know that”
The community organised immediate support and mutual aid when official responses failed. Neighbours and local networks mobilised resources, care and practical help through their own relationships and collective effort.
Teaching this history recognises residents as people with agency and civic capability. Solidarity is part of the community’s continuing story, alongside loss and injustice, and provides a concrete basis for thinking about collective responsibility.
“… if you could put in a bottle what this community did for each other, it’s quite extraordinary. And that is through just galvanising energy”
Teach the established facts of the fire and the decisions that made it possible. This includes the installation of flammable external cladding, corporate practices and regulatory failures, alongside the social inequalities through which residents’ safety was devalued.
Explaining these connections helps learners distinguish evidence from rumour and see Grenfell as a preventable disaster. Technical explanations need to be connected to questions about power, profit, public responsibility and whose lives are protected.
“I would say they just didn’t care because we were not white and rich. Being passive … I would not say they are mainly passive, because they wanted to save money”
Residents repeatedly raised concerns about fire safety, but those with power failed to respond. Their warnings show that the disaster was foreseeable and that community knowledge was available before lives were lost.
The framework treats this as a failure of recognition, representation and ethical responsibility. Learners should examine whose concerns are heard, whose knowledge is dismissed, and how disability, income and language can shape people’s ability to obtain a response.
“Some of the people who were speaking up before Grenfell were people who were disabled … if those people had been heard, maybe there would have been fewer victims”
The framework presents justice as a continuing concern that includes accountability, recognition and redress. Community members distinguish financial settlement from the forms of responsibility and justice they seek.
Their sustained, peaceful campaigning is part of Grenfell’s legacy. Learners should understand why an inquiry or settlement does not, by itself, bring an affected community’s pursuit of justice to an end, and why that pursuit can continue long after a disaster.
“Yes, there’s been a civil lawsuit and that’s been settled, but I don’t think anyone thinks that’s justice”
Develop the ability to scrutinise decisions made by authorities and corporations: whose interests they serve, whose safety they put at risk and how power shapes the available choices.
The aim is to apply ethical reasoning to governance and business practice. Learners should become able to identify negligence, challenge unsafe priorities and advocate for human dignity and safety in their own civic and professional lives.
“The corporate greed, desire for profits and money were evidently more important than hundreds of human lives”
Prepare learners to recognise and refuse practices that endanger people, including unsafe shortcuts justified by cost or institutional pressure. This has particular relevance to future work in architecture, construction and public service, while extending to every role with responsibility for others.
The framework places lives, safety and accountability at the centre of professional judgement. Ethical responsibility includes challenging an organisation’s decisions when loyalty or financial gain conflicts with people’s well-being.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re going to be a playground monitor or running a 40,000-unit housing management organisation; it’s about ethics”
Help learners connect with the people behind the statistics and recognise the experiences of loss and trauma that survivors and bereaved families describe. Empathy involves taking those experiences seriously and responding with care.
Emotional intelligence includes learning to talk respectfully about tragedy and to recognise and process difficult feelings. The framework calls for a safe educational space in which these capacities can develop as part of compassionate civic life.
“… it’s not hard to talk about like loss respectfully … I guess all it takes is just a bit of emotional intelligence”
Learn to attend to what people say, recognise their concerns and resist redirecting a conversation away from their experience. The failure to hear residents before the fire makes listening an urgent ethical and civic responsibility.
The framework also recognises the harm caused when people feel unheard in the aftermath. Active listening builds understanding and trust, shows respect and supports democratic participation.
“we needed to be active listeners and that it’s a sign of respect”
Develop the capacity to support others, organise collectively and advocate for rights. The Grenfell community’s mutual aid and campaigning provide examples of how people can act together when official systems fail them.
This component translates knowledge of community solidarity into possibilities for participation. Learners can understand being a good neighbour, raising concerns and supporting one another as forms of civic agency through which communities seek recognition and change.
“what’s been most powerful in all of this is learning from this community: learning how to raise our voices, how to build self-esteem, and how to support each other”
Equip learners to question sources, identify bias and examine how news and social media frame disasters. Narratives can circulate misinformation, sensationalise suffering or repeat stereotypes while obscuring the institutions and decisions responsible.
Critical media literacy involves asking whose perspectives are represented and whose interests a story serves. It supports the ability to distinguish evidence from rumour and to challenge accounts that undermine community dignity or silence community knowledge.
