Lesson video

Hello, and welcome to our lesson today.

My name is Mr. Miskell, and I'll be your citizenship teacher for today's lesson.

Today's lesson is really an exciting and interesting one.

It looks at how is local government structured and it's lesson three of six.

Now, before we get started with our learning, I need to make sure that we have got a few things sorted.

Now, firstly, you need to make sure that you have got a pen or pencil by your side and that you've also got a piece of paper in front of you.

That's really important so that you can participate in our activities and also that you can jot down any notes that you may well need to recall our lesson later on.

The last thing that you need to make sure that you do is that you need to make sure that you are in a quiet space so that you can participate in what we're going to do today without any distraction whatsoever.

Now, if you've not got those things sorted, you can pause our lesson, but if you have got things sorted, you are ready to start our lesson today.

So now today's lesson is part of an overarching unit that looks at where does power reside in the UK.

And by reside, I mean, where does it rest in the United Kingdom? And it is lesson three, and lesson three focuses in on how is local government structured? Now in order to answer that particular question about how it local government is structured, it then takes us on to consider what is our agenda today.

So what are we going to be learning together today? So firstly, we are going to be trying to think about, why is it important to know who holds the power? Which is really about, why are we learning this today? That will then lead us on to the people who carry out that power, and that's about the structure of local councils.

Then we're going to be thinking about the roles in the council, which is then going to lead us on to testing your knowledge in a quiz.

And lastly, we are going to do a little bit of exam question practise and feedback together.

So in order to go about that, we are going to be focused gain in on the first thing today, which is really about, why is it important to know who holds power? Now it's important for an active citizen to know who holds power locally as this allows you to target who best to speak to and persuade.

For example, if you really don't want a housing development to be built in your area, you are powerless to do anything about it, unless you know who makes those decisions.

Knowing who makes decisions allows you to send petitions, email, or meet with them.

In local government, this can be complicated.

You need to know about councillors, cabinet members, and council officers.

And that's what we're going to go into in much more detail as part of our lesson today.

We're going to look at councillors, cabinet members, and council officers as well.

And I'm going to introduce you to a few different people who carry out those roles and functions.

So I'd like you to use the information that we've just learned together there today.

And remember that you can rewind our lesson to just look over it as well.

And then task one is really about why it's important to know who holds power.

So in order to answer that question, I'd like you to use the information from the last slide to explain why it is useful for an active citizen to know who holds power in local government.

A new housing development is used as an example, but try and think of your own example as well.

So now is a good time to pause the video to complete your task and remember to resume it once you have finished.

Good luck.

So well done that for participating in that task and really giving it a good go.

So in order to feedback for task one, which is about why it's important to know who holds power, students in my classes often say these things to me.

They often say that, "Well, it allows you to target who best to speak to and persuade.

It allows you to petition, email, meet with decision makers.

It makes you powerful, not powerless." And examples you could have used here could be varied including maybe wanting a new playground or skate park to be built, needing more investment in youth clubs locally, or maybe calls for a 20 miles an hour zone to improve road safety outside a school or known accident hotspot.

Remember you could have chosen a whole host of other examples as well, as long as they applied to local councils in a local area.

So learning that then leads us to think very much about the structure of local councils and those groups of people which are councillors, cabinet members, and council officers.

Now the biggest group of people on your screen are councillors.

And you can see that that's square there contains people who are councillors.

So every one of those people, whether they are marked as councillors or cabinet members, are all councillors, and they attend full council meetings once a month.

The majority of those people are the people in the green box there.

The green box that are backbench councillors.

So their job is to represent their community and turn up for that council meeting once a month at the very minimum in order to make decisions about the city.

However, the people are very top of the screen, in pink, are cabinet members.

They are also local councillors but they're specific cabinet members.

And that means that they also lead local council departments.

For example, they might lead a local council department or area about education and young people or about parks in the countryside.

And one of those people, who is a member of the cabinet, is also the leader.

So that's the person who's the figurehead in the local council as well, who kind of makes some of the biggest decisions there.

The other people on your screen are council officers, and they are not councillors, they're council officers, and their job is to support councillors and to support councillors who are cabinet members in making decisions.

Their job is not necessarily to make the decisions themselves, but provide the options and be experts, provide advice to councillors and provide advice to councillors who are also cabinet members.

And their advice is meant to be partial, it's not meant to favour one political party or another.

And they're are also experts in particular areas of the council services they're on.

For example, they might be experts on planning towns and the layout of roads, or about schools and education and those sorts Of things.

So those particular roles within the structure of local councils, councillors, councillors who are cabinet members and council officers, are what we are going to be focusing in on in a second, as part of the next stage in our lesson.

Now, remember that you can pause our lesson now and you can look at this in much more detail to help you understand it even better.

But I'd like you now to be introduced to three different people, and the three different people represent the roles in council.

Now the first person is Councillor Jayne.

Now Cllr means councillor.

She is a backbench councillor.

So she was part of the largest group within the diagram that we saw on the previous slide.

I'd like to introduce you to Councillor Mary who is waving there.

Councillor Mary is also a councillor and she's a cabinet member.

And lastly, I'd like to introduce you to Fred.

Now Fred isn't a councillor.

He doesn't have councillor before his name, but he is a council officer.

So three people representing three different groups of people within the structure of local councils that we're going to look at today.

Now in order to kind of go on this inquiry, I'd like to make sure that you've got a table in front of you.

This table is included as part of the worksheet for this particular lesson, and you can write into that worksheet.

Alternatively, you could pause the lesson now and you could create this particular table yourself by making sure that along the top, you've got backbench councillor and you've got Jayne, you've got cabinet member and Mary, and you've got council officer Fred, and down the side, that you have got the role that they carry out.

And by role, I mean, what job do they carry out, and accountability.

And what I mean by accountability here is the idea of, who kind of do they report to? You know, fundamentally if something goes wrong, then who is the person who they are responsible to? Is that the people in terms of losing election, an the election potentially, or actually is that another council officer, another paid colleague, that type of thing.

So now's the time to locate the worksheet where you've got this table.

Alternatively, jot the worksheet down yourself.

Now the first person I'd like to introduce you to is Councillor Jayne.

So my name is Councillor Jayne and I am a backbench councillor.

I'm a back backbench councillor.

This means that I don't have a specific job in the council other than to represent the community that I was elected to serve.

I also have a full-time job, so I often attend council meetings in the evening.

I spend my time answering emails from residents in my ward, that's an area, and speaking up for them.

Constituents, who are residents, in my area elect me.

Now, what you've got to make sure that you do is that you pause our lesson now, and I'll make this full screen so that you can zoom into a much greater detail.

I'd like you to add the information that's on your screen now that we're learning about together today about Jayne to your table.

So what does the role that Jayne performs as a backbench councillor, and who is she accountable to as well? Now the next person I'd like to introduce you to is Councillor Mary.

So my name is Councillor Mary and I'm a cabinet member.

Like Jayne, I'm also a councillor but I have a specific role in the council.

The leader of the council appointed me as a cabinet member, which means that I sit on the front benches in big town hall meetings.

It's my responsibility to make important decisions and lead a portfolio area within the council.

My portfolio is Housing and Community Services.

This means that it's my job to make sure that we have good quality homes in our city.

So that is Councillor Mary and she is a cabinet member.

So you can pause our lesson now, and you can add the information that we've learned together today about Councillor Mary to your table there.

Now the last person I'd like to introduce you to is Fred, and he is a council officer.

So my name is Fred and I'm a council officer.

My job is to implement, to put in place, political decisions made by local councillors.

I am not elected and I'm there to advise councillors.

There are council officers that are specialists on lots of different topics, but I am an expert in planning.

This means that I help councillors to make decisions on whether new housing developments should be allowed.

I'm not elected to my job but appointed through application and interview.

Now is the time to pause our lesson and add the information about Fred, who is a council officer, to your table.

Now, students in my lesson who have looked at those three different people: Jayne, Mary, and Fred, and the different roles that they carry out and who they're accountable to, will often present me with a table that looks something like this.

They will say that in terms of Jayne, who is a backbench councillor, the role that she performs is to represent constituents, who are residents in her ward or area.

She doesn't have a responsibility in council beyond this.

Jayne sits on the backbenches in important council meetings.

In terms of accountability, that is to the electorate, the residents in Jayne's ward and area.

In terms of Cabinet Member Mary, her role is that Mary is a councillor but also has a specific role to lead a portfolio area within the council.

Her department is Housing and Community Services.

Mary he sits on the front bench at important council meetings.

Her accountability is to the leader of the council who appointed Jayne, and could sack her if they wanted.

And lastly, but by no means least, is Fred, and Fred is a council officer.

In terms of Fred's role, Fred's job is to implement the political decisions made by councillors.

He is there to advise councillors.

Often council officers are experts on certain services that the council runs.

It's important that they are impartial.

Now remember impartial means not favouring one side or the other one political party or the other.

And in terms of accountability, well, he applied and was interviewed to his job, not elected.

He is accountable to the Chief Executive, who is the most senior council officer.

So now's the time to pause our class now and add to your table in order to make it even better if you don't have any aspects that I've just talked about there.

So in order to be able to bring all that information together, we're going to do a little bit of a true or false quiz activity.

And I'd like to hear you shout out the answer.

So firstly, knowing who makes decision locally makes you powerful, true or false? What is the answer, true or false? And hopefully, you are telling me that the answer is true.

Now, it is true, isn't it? That knowing who makes decisions locally makes you powerful because only by knowing who makes decisions are you able to kind of send them emails, to send petitions over them or meet with them and tell them what you actually think.

Otherwise you are powerless.

Now our second true or false is this.

The backbench councillors have a portfolio, and a portfolio is a service area to lead and make decisions about, like Housing and Community Services? So I'd like to hear you say true or false.

Shout that out now, is it true or is it false? Now hopefully, you have just told me there that it is actually false.

And the reason that it is false is that back bench councillors are not there with specific roles in the council.

Their job is simply to represent their constituents, people who live in their area, residents who live in their area.

Now, if you're a councillor who's then appointed to cabinet, that group of people who make decisions about how the council runs on a day-to-day basis, then you do have a portfolio.

You do lead and run a service area within the council, like Housing and Community Services, but backbench councillors don't, yeah.

And that then leads us on to bringing that information together.

And I would like you to pause the video in a second to complete your task.

And the task here is about an exam question.

So task four is an exam question.

And cabinet members have elected councillors who make decisions on services that the council run, like libraries.

I'd like you to just digest three benefits of using elected citizens to make decisions about council services.

So you're looking here for three particular marks and that means that you're looking for three separate ideas really, that's my hint to you.

You're looking for three separate ideas about the benefits of using elected citizens opposed to people who are just interviewed and appointed to make decisions at that council services.

So pause our lesson now and have a go at this particular task and resume once you've finished.

So well done there for giving that task a really good go.

Now, students in my classes often give me answers like this one that present with a question that says, suggest three benefits of using elected citizens to make decisions about council services? Remember that this is a three-mark question, so you're looking for three particular points.

So point one will be, elected councillors are elected by the public and if they don't do a good job, voters, the electorate, can vote for someone else to represent them at the next local election.

And really that's about accountability.

So in your table, you focused in on accountability and particularly accountability about cabinet members who are councillors, but also backbench councillors.

And we know that they're accountable to the electorate, the residents in their area, and their area is called a ward.

Number two is they know a lot about the area that they serve because they either work or live in that area and talk frequently with members of the public.

Now, of course, they have to talk frequently to members of the public, or they're not going to get reelected, are they? And that's one of the things that's quite unique about having people who are elected.

This system forces them to talk to people, otherwise it's unlikely that they're going to get reelected.

And point number three, that you might well have, that students in my class often share with me is that, because they're elected, the decisions that they make come with authority as they are more likely to have the backing of the people.

Now they have authority because they've gone through a process of standing for election, of ideally having a manifesto that writes down them ideas and winning that election, which gives them a certain authority to be able to make make decisions there.

And that's three benefits of using elected citizens to make decisions about council services.

And I'll make this full screen now so that you can add to your answers and make them even stronger and upgrade them as well.

So feel free to pause our lesson now to upgrade your answers.

Now today, we have taken part in a really varied lesson.

Firstly, we've looked at why it's important to know who holds the power, so why we are actually learning about this, why we're learning about the structure of local councils and the roles in local councils.

That then led us on to thinking about three specific people within the council.

We looked at councillors who are backbenchers, we looked at councillors who are cabinet members, and then we also looked at council officers as well, and we filled out a table.

So we've got more of information about those.

We then brought that information together in order to be able to have a quiz where we tested our knowledge.

And after that, we did a bit of exam question practise and feedback as well.

So thank you very much for participating in our lesson today.

Now I'd like you to consider sharing your work with OakNational.

And if you'd like to, please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Twitter by tagging @OakNational and using the #LearnwithOak.

Now before you leave our lesson, I'd like you to complete the exit quiz now as well, because it's really, really important to bring together all of your learning, everything that you've been participating in as part of this lesson.

So thank you very much.

It has been an utter pleasure to be your citizenship teacher today.

Thank you, bye-bye.