Your Vote Week 2025 – Sixth Form Students get informed and get involved

This week our Sixth Form students have been involved in the Electoral Commission’s Your Vote Week. This started by welcoming Matt Western (MP) to North Leamington School to speak with Sixth Form Politics students, and was capped with a visit by a team from the local authority.

17 Students standing in a classroom with Matt Western (MP) and Mr Taylor, Head of Sixth Form

The aim of 'Your Vote Week' is to support young people to have the knowledge they need to get involved in democracy and elections – in particular, to use their vote. This year’s theme is: “get informed and get involved”.
This entails accessing trustworthy information to get informed about politics, democracy and elections, and taking the first steps to get involved locally. At NLS, we have:

Offered coverage of Electoral Commission resources in Tutor Time
Students experienced an assembly from the Local Authority around using the vote available to them now (as 18 year olds) or soon (as that landmark age approaches)
A poster campaign (with QR codes linked to information bases)
Linked Matt Western’s visit to this drive for political involvement from our students
Continued to entrust our Student Leaders with collaborative projects aimed at enhancing student voice in the Sixth Form and the wider school

On Thursday we welcomed Steve, Harriet and Emily who gave a terrific assembly to Sixth Form students on the vitality of using their vote and ended the session with a mock vote on whether the age of voting in England should be lowered to 16 – to follow suit with other home nations and to better correspond with the ability to marry, pay taxes or be involved in the armed forces at that age!

A Sixth Form posting their vote in the ballot box

A Sixth Form posting their vote in the ballot box Three people from the Local Authority and Mr Taylor Head of Sixth Form in front of the purple curtain in the theatre where an assembly took place in the theatre

The mock referendum was overwhelmingly well-received and very positive in that 90%+ of students indicated that they would make use of their vote if it were available today.

This has been a really exciting project for our students and, along with the topics Sixth Form students have covered in PSHE & Tutor Time, links to their personal development and being good citizens. For example, at the start of February, Year 12 explored democracy, government institutions and aspects of good citizenship in a series of Tutor Time sessions as part of our ongoing focus on developing well-informed, engaged and proactive young people.

Thanks to all involved!