Last Wednesday the Politics Society launched the campaign at the University.
We collected signatures for our petition, and made sure students who signed it were registered to vote. If they weren’t we helped them to fill out voter registration forms so that they can participate in this year’s local elections. We also ran activities, such as encouraging people to take a political alignment test, to see where on the political spectrum their views broadly placed them.
Students were also encouraged to think about the best ways to teach younger people about politics and asked if there were any wider issues that mattered to them. With participants’ interests ranging from Trident to homelessness, it quickly became clear that young people are far from apathetic, they simply do not feel engaged with the political system.
At every general election young people as a group are the least likely to vote. We believe that having politics on
the National Curriculum would give young people a proper understanding of how laws are made and how they can participate in our democratic system. Understanding how the country is run should be every bit as important as
learning Maths and English, as it equips people to properly make decisions which will affect them and the rest of their country.
We are hoping to work with secondary schools, colleges and sixth forms to run workshops explaining the campaign and the importance of voting and we will be lobbying Karl McCartney to raise the issue in the House of Commons to spark a debate there.