After a tumultuous week of hustings, campaigning, electioneering and debating the returning officer finally delivered the outcome for the first St. James’ General Election and it was the Green Eco Party who were given the mandate to govern.
With a fascinating split of opinion between the age group demographics where children and adults voted for the opposite outcomes (in terms of first and last parties), there is much we can learn about target audiences, differing priorities and general politicking overall. We have had a fantastic week engaging in this well fought fight for hearts and minds and would like to thank Year 6 for being such fantastic role models of engagement and enterprise. Many of you have spoken with me about how energised your children have been by the project and we will look forward to sharing snippets of the election process in the coming days.
Watching the children line up, nervous, pensive, excited and apprehensive before they disappeared into the booth to cast their votes was one of those wonderful and privileged experiences that you can be fortunate enough to encounter in education, and it was all summed up by the awed comment of one young lady who posted her vote in the ballot box and then said in a somewhat surprised and emotive voice – ‘I feel so important.‘ Let’s hope that this first experience of democracy in action inspires some of our current children to step up to the plate and represent us politically in the future – the country could do with some St. James’ character in our country’s leadership…!
Well done to the Green Eco party – they will be holding cabinet meetings with Mr Payne in the coming weeks to discuss their agenda.
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