FGM campaigner Fahma Mohamed urges Gove to help end cycle of abuse

Click here to sign the FGM petition to Michael Gove

The Bristol student Fahma Mohamed is due to meet Michael Gove to press him to seek an end to female genital mutilation in the UK by urging every school to train teachers and parents about the horrors of the practice.

The education secretary will on Tuesday speak to Mohamed and members of the youth charity Integrate Bristol, which campaigns for more education about FGM in schools.

The meeting comes after almost 250,000 people signed a Guardian-backed petition on the campaigning website Change.org calling on Gove to take action.

The campaign has gathered momentum since its launch, at the beginning of the month, becoming one of the biggest campaigns hosted on the site and winning the support of the Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai and the general secretary of the UN, Ban Ki-moon.

As a result of the campaign the Scottish government has already agreed to send a letter to every teacher in Scotland asking them to be proactive about teaching the risks and warning signs of FGM.

Writing today in the Guardian, Mohamed said Gove had the opportunity to make a real difference, She would ask him to write to all schools before the summer holidays offering guidance to teachers about how to tackle FGM, asking headteachers to train staff about warning signs and risk, and calling on them to teach children about the dangers of FGM.

"It's time for some real progress from Michael Gove," she said. "Teachers are smart people; they can teach this difficult issue sensitively and delicately. I should know: I've seen it happen. The quicker the message gets to schools, the quicker the cycle will be broken.

"In secondary schools teachers will talk to tomorrow's mothers, breaking the cycle that way; in primary schools teachers would have the confidence to take on this issue on the frontline."

Mohamed said she hoped the education secretary would not ignore the wishes of everyone who had signed the campaign petition. "Gove should write to them because of the hundreds of thousands who have backed our campaign and know it's the right thing to do, who agree that this horrific abuse must be stopped," she said.

"It's important that schools in all areas get the message, [that] teachers move and so do people. The FGM emergency needs to be tackled head on, and tackled now.

"For those who have survived FGM, it will mean so much. It will mean that he has understood, he has heard, and he understands that it is, simply, child abuse. I hope he'll want to be remembered as the person who broke the cycle of abuse, and stopped it."