Liberal Democrat Landslide!

The Liberal Democrats sweep to a massive electoral result by winning 4 of the 5 constituencies in the school mock election with Labour winning the Year 10 constituency and the Conservatives none.

The Liberal Democrats took 52 % of all votes cast, with Labour in second place with 27% and the Conservatives coming third with 21%.

The winning party leader and "Prime Minister" elect is pictured on the right.

We await to see if the school results are reproduced in the real General Election on May 6th!!!

The full results are shown below.

Since the announcement of the General Election Highams Park school has been organising its own mock election to mirror the real one. Party leaders for the three main political parties have been recruited and candidates for the different constituencies within school have been selected. All have been busy canvassing the pupil voters to gain their support in the election that is taking place this week.

Each Year group will act as a contituency and elect its own MP except years 11, 12 and 13 who are being treated as one constituency so that not too much time and energy is diverted away from their forthcoming exams, Each Year group is voting at lunch time in real polling booths and real election boxes borrowed from the local council.

The school’s mock election campaign trail began before Easter with pupils encouraged to stand as potential candidates, they were then selected by the party leaders and campaign teams formed.

This was backed up by every year group using their one hour of citizenship lessons per week to cover the topics “Who are the Main Political Parties and what do they believe in?” “What type of person do you want to be your MP?” and “should the voting age be lowered to 16?”

Candidates have held hustings in the playground, had a cake “meet and greet” session, each party has designated poster spots around the school and has been given a £100 budget for media and advertising. Party leaders have also participated in a debate on a new schools web based radio station called “radiowaves” and each candidate was given time to address their whole year group in assemblies.

The school aims for the mock elections are:

To raise awareness of citizenship and the benefits of active, participatory democracy.

Engage young people by mirroring the excitement and buzz of a real election and therefore encourage the pupils to speak to parents and family to gain a greater understanding of the blanket news coverage of the election in the next month.

Help address the trend of voter disengagement amongst young people and help pupils gain an understanding of how the democratic process works.

The whole processes is designed to make the election fun and interesting for pupils and therefore bring politics to life and closer to a young persons understanding of what is going on in the wider world around them. After the school mock election pupils (in connection with their citizenship lessons) will have a greater understanding of how elections and the political process work and make pupils feel like they are playing a part in something important and relevant to their life.  

The mock election is part of the Citizenship programme in the school run by Mr C. Share.

The mock election provides a marvellous opportunity for pupils to experience the political process and learn how democracy works. We await the results with bated breath and will announce them here soon.