Election May 2015
At the Priory Ruskin Academy we want to encourage our students of all ages to get involved in the Elections, understand the history and policies of the main political parties and to have an insight into the democratic process. To achieve this we decided to have our own general election.
Politics at the Priory Ruskin Academy
35% of the UK population did not vote in the last election and as a result they gave up their right to have a say in the government of our country. For young people this is often the result of ignorance of the policies of political parties and the democratic process. Some of our Sixth Form are already eligible to vote, others soon will be. At The Priory Ruskin Academy we wanted to encourage our students of all ages to get involved, understand the history and policies of the main political parties and to have an insight into the democratic process. To achieve this we decided to have our own general election.
We began by making an election video about the main political parties and their policies which students watched in form time. However, we did not want to produce passive voters so we organised an MPs surgery and prepared to answer questions to what we expected to be a small number of students. Much to our surprise, students of all ages turned up and our surgery was busy throughout the lunchtime. Staff 'representing' the political parties faced difficult questions even from the youngest of our students who wanted to know exactly how each party intended to pay for the things that they had promised.
Our now much more politically informed electorate voted yesterday in our own election which was a close run event with Labour coming in first, closely followed by Conservatives and UKIP. The Liberal Democrat party had a disappointing turn out.