Alka Sehgal Cuthbert
Dr Alka Sehgal Cuthbert is an educator, academic, author and campaigner who believes passionately in the essential importance of impartiality both in education and as a prerequisite for the civilised conversations necessary for democracy to flourish. Alka assumed the directorship of advocacy group Don’t Divide Us following two years as its founder lead on education - a campaign which she felt impelled to join as a counter to the fractious and one-sided discussions about race relations in the UK which have dominated since 2020.
Alka is a wife and mother of two adult children. She enjoys cooking, opera and travelling to visit family in India, when time allows. She studied as an undergraduate at the Newcastle Polytechnic, before reading for an MA and subsequently a DPhil at the University of Cambridge. Alka began her career teaching English Literature in inner city London and went on to become a member of the Ofsted Advisory Panel on English. Until recently she was still practising on the front line as an English teacher with the Civitas Education Charity supplementary schools project. She is a prolific author of specialist texts on education, including What Should Schools Teach? Disciplines, Subjects and the Pursuit of Truth (IoE UCL Press, 2017). She has spoken at numerous prestigious conferences and gave evidence to the 2016 All-Party Parliamentary Group Inquiry (APPGI) on Knowledge and Skills in Education.
The thrust of Alka's current political perspective is indicated by the following remark of hers on race relations in the UK: 'Britain has a positive story to tell about race. My family came here and found a country still on a journey to redefining its new postwar relationship with the commonwealth. For the most part it has done this successfully and it’s a tragic mistake to allow all that we’ve achieved to be side-lined in a chaotic rush to import ideas from elsewhere that don’t reflect our joint inheritance in the UK.'
A few of her media appearances can be found here, here and here. Alka has also been interviewed on ITV's Good Morning Britain and the BBC's Sunday Morning Live among other shows.
