Lesson video

Hello and welcome to our lesson today.

My name is Mr. Miskell and I'll be your citizenship teacher as part of second lesson in a unit of work about how does local democracy work.

Now today's lesson focuses on what do local councils do and it's the second of six lessons in this unit.

Now, before we get going with our learning today, I need to make sure that you've got a few things sorted.

You need to make sure that you've got a pen or a pencil, and you need to make sure that you've got a paper, or a sheet of paper by your side so that you can take part in learning, you can make notes, but also that you can actually write down things for the tasks that we're going to be doing together.

Another thing that's really important is you need to make sure that you're in a quiet space so that you can participate in our lesson without any distractions.

Now, if you've not got those things sorted, then you need to pause our lesson now and hit restart when you've got them sorted.

So let's get started with our learning.

Now we are going to be trying to do a number of things today.

Firstly, we said, what does local councils or what do local councils do was our focus.

And really the first thing is that we're going to try and work out.

Well, why should we be learning about this? Why is this important? And we're going to try and personalise it with someone called Zac.

And we're going to think about why it's important for his life, that he understands what local councils do and why we should learn about this.

In order to do that, we're then going to explain local councils and the different types of councils that exist across England, because there are a number of different types of councils that exist across England.

Then we're going to move on to what do local councils do and what kind of services they provide.

And I'm going to take you on a walking tour of my city, which will be quite fun.

And that's going to open a question about how are the services that we identify I'm going to take you through in my city.

How are they financed? How are they paid for? And then once we've done that, I'm going to give you a takeaway task to do after our lesson where you're going to research your own local council and consider the different services that are provided by your local council.

So let's get started with our learning today.

The first thing that I said that we would do is that we would try and personalise this.

We try and think about why it's important to learn about local councils and why this matters to you.

And we're going to use Zac.

And there's an example to this.

So what the local councils do and why this matters to Zac, now, throughout the unit, Zac is learning how he can become more powerful.

Bit by bit, he's developing the superpower skills and knowledge needed to change his community and become an active citizen.

To do this, Zac needs to know an awful lot about how the world works in his area.

Now the first stage of this involves Zac learning about his local council who makes decisions and runs services in his local area.

Another name for the type of decision-making at local council level is local government.

Now throughout our series of work, our unit of work about local democracy, and we are going to be using those words interchangeably to talk about local government, local councils, and sometimes local authorities that are saying things really.

And by local government, we really mean that the local councils that deliver services in a county, a city or town, and of course, sometimes they're known as a local authority.

Now there are many different types of councils in England because many parts of England have what is called a two tiers or two tiers of local government.

County councils, district, borough or city councils.

In some parts of the country, there's just one tier of local government providing all the local services.

We call this unit trait.

There are three main types of these unitary councils and there's one that's called a unitary authorities in shire areas, London boroughs and metropolitan boroughs.

Some areas also have parish councils.

These overlap other councils and are focused in villages or smaller areas of towns or cities.

Now I'll make this much bigger on your screen so that you can pause our lesson now and you can read over this now at your leisure but I'm going to do a little bit of an activity to recap on what we've learned about different types of councils in England, and it's a true or false activity.

And it says in a unitary authority, there's just one council providing all or all of the local services.

Now, is that true or is it false? I want you to pause for a second and I want you to work that out.

Is it true or is it false? The answer to that is that actually it is true, in a unitary authority, they're just one council providing all of the local services.

And I live, for example, in a unitary authority, it's a city and it provides all of the local services.

Now I'm going to take you on a walking tour of my city.

And what I'm going to do is ask that you join me on this walking tour of my city and see what the local council does to help you with the next task.

Now, this is something where you are going to watch and have to walk very intently because there'll be an activity to do afterwards.

So all you have to do is watch my walking tour of the city, and I'd like you to really, really consider what services are provided by my local council in my area.

So I'm out and about, and I'm walking through my city.

And what we're going to do now is we are going to go on a walking tour and try and look at what local government does throughout our towns, cities, villages and counties across England.

Roads and street crossings just like this one are maintained by local councils so that we can cross the road safely.

Without local councils, there'd be no recycling or rubbish collection and there'd be no bins in our towns and cities like this one here.

You can probably hear diggers, and people working on the building side behind me and local council is responsible for the planning of sites like this and giving them permission to build.

Local councils also give out licences and make sure that standards like food hygiene and safety are a real top priority and takeaways in pubs and a cafes just like the one at the back of me now.

Streetlights are also something that are maintained and run by our local councils so that we can make sure that our streets are safe in the evening and we feel very secure.

Taxi is also something that is licenced by local councils.

That means that local councils check to make sure that it's safe to operate on our roads and our streets.

They look after our parks and our open spaces just like the one at the back of me now.

Even though it's really windy at the moment the building behind me is a library.

And that's an example of a nother service that is run by the local council.

Local councils also spend an awful lot of time trying to encourage fans and cultural activities in the towns and cities.

And behind me at the moment, you can see an example of that.

That's the World's Snooker Championship in Sheffield.

So I hope you've enjoyed our trip around my city together, looking at what local councils do.

Now, local councils do an awful lot.

And I've only mentioned a snippet of the sorts of things that they do.

Things like maintaining our parks and open spaces to make sure that they're safe places and brilliant places for us to be able to enjoy things like making sure that our roads are maintained and our street lights are lit in the evening so that we feel safe and secure like making sure that we've got libraries that we can go and learn in as well to help you learn a little bit from our walking tour of my city.

So well done there for watching my walking tour of my city.

I hope you enjoyed it.

I'd been pointing out things like bins and open spaces and all sorts of different things in my city.

Now I've got a bit of a gap fill for you today and it's task one, what do local councils do? Your job is to fill in the gaps after watching my short video about what local councils do.

What I'm going to do is I'm going to make this full screen.

And I would like you to pause the class now, and I would like you to try and fit in those words at the bottom of your screen, buildings, libraries, recycling, hygiene events, street crossings, parks and taxis into the correct space to fill in those gaps in this particular passage.

Now, good luck.

Now's the time to pause our lesson and give this task a go.

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

And I'm going to run you through some feedback to check your answers.

We're going to read through this passage together and work out what local services were provided by my council on the walking tour that we went on together.

So I'll make this full screen so that you can see it and we can read through it together.

So roads and street crossings are maintained by local councils.

So we can cross safely, without local councils, there'll be no recycling, rubbish collections or bins in our towns and cities.

Local councils are also responsible for the planning of new buildings and giving out licences to cafes and pubs to make sure that food hygiene is a top priority.

Streetlights are also maintained by local councils.

Councils issue taxi licences making sure that they are safe to operate in our streets.

Parks and open spaces are also looked after by councils as are libraries.

Local councils also spent a lot of time trying to encourage events and cultural activities into our towns and cities.

Now here are our selection of services that are provided by local councils, because I only talked about a small number in my walking tour and this is a good opportunity for you to pause the lesson now, when I make this full screen and jot down a few of the services that are often provided by local councils, such as education, libraries, parks, council housing, licencing of pubs, planning of new buildings, rubbish and recycling children's social work, cemeteries, local museums, adult social care, trading standards, environmental protection, leisure centres, and youth services.

Now just for the sake of clarity, one of those that you might find it a little bit more difficult to understand is about trading standards.

What we mean about trading standards is, if you have sold a product from a shop and that happens to be defective and cause you some sort of problem through kind of eating it and it being really unpleasant and it could be a problem for your health or alternatively might be that maybe it's a toy that actually could be really dangerous for little children for example, you can report that to your local councils trading founder's department and they can deal with the retailer for example, it means that they have to stick to certain sorts of rules, that type of stuff.

Another one is kind of environmental protection.

So they make sure that, for example, our streets aren't infested with rats and stuff like that.

They also deal with like food hygiene and giving certificates for kind of takeaways in restaurants to make sure that they don't give us food poisoning, all that type of stuff as well.

So now is the time to pause this slide and to pause our lesson now, jot down a few of the services that are provided by local councils, which will help you with the tasks that we're going to be doing in a second.

So thank you very much for jotting down a number of different services that are provided by local councils there.

Now, I want to take you onto task two, which is again about Zac and it's about Zac's journey through local government.

Remember we said that local government is just a different way of saying local councils or also local authorities.

They're the same thing really and don't confuse yourself with that.

So I'd like you to listen to this story about Zac's morning routine and I'd like you to use bullet points, to create a list of different council services that Zac encounters during his morning.

What I mean by encounters is what he comes across.

And I'm going to take my picture off screen and my video off screen and this will allow you to follow what we're going to be through much, much more closely.

Remember after we've read through it together, you can pause our lesson, which will allow you to kind of go over it again, which might help you with the next part of our task.

So Zac gets up in the morning.

His social worker has sent him a text.

She wants him to give her a call about meeting up with his dad.

He leaves the house and walks down the road to school.

Whilst walking to school, he visits the local bakers for tasty bun.

He notices that the air seems very polluted today.

Before he turns into the school gate, Zac notices a rubbish truck.

It is collecting recycled rubbish from the new estate that has just been built near his house.

Now, remember your job here is to make sure that you create a list of different council services that Zac encounters or comes across during his morning.

So now is the time to pause our lesson and create a bullet pointed list about all the different council services that Zac comes across during his morning.

Good luck.

Now these are some of the things that you may well have picked up on.

I'm going to go through them individually but this is just helpful to put on the screen for a second so that you can cross reference what you've just read and what we've read through together and the different services that Zac has come across to give you a little bit of feedback about it.

More, you can pause the class now and you can have a look at this in more detail or alternatively, I'm going to run you through it in a bullet point fashion the way that I asked you to do the task originally.

Now, in terms of feeding back about this, I would say that the services that Zac encounters are children's social services and the example in the texts that we've read about, Zac's morning was, well, he got a text from his social worker, didn't he? So he'd got a text from Zac social worker.

Roads and pavements were another service that's provided by local council because Zac to get to school.

Another one was trading standards.

Zac eats a bun from the local bakery, environmental protection, the air seems polluted today, rubbish and recycling, Zac notices a rubbish truck which was collecting and recycling and planning because the newest state has been built near Zac's house.

So this is an example of the wide reaching services that are provided by local councils, local governments in his area there.

Now I'd like you to think not just about the services that are provided by local councils because there are an awful lot of services that provided by local councils.

So also think a little bit more deeply about how are those services paid for? And that's really important because if Zac wants to argue for more of one service or less of another, then there are implications about how it's financed really because there's only a finite amount of money.

And what I mean by finite amount of money is that kind of, you can't simply magic money if you're a local council, you have to get it from somewhere really, don't you? So I'm going to make this much bigger on your screen so that we can read through it together.

Now, the graph that is on your screen is part of the worksheet that is attached to this particular lesson.

So you can zoom into it much more closely on your worksheet which will help you with the next task.

What I'm going to be asking you about sources of funding which is about income that local council receives.

Now, how are services paid for? And the example here is from Doncaster Council, I could use any council across the country but I've just had to go for one.

And it's Doncaster council.

Now the quality of services provided by local council often depends on how much money the council has coming in.

And we call that income.

If residents in a town called for more to be spent on one service, this could mean spending less on another service.

Each year, local councils set a budget.

This explains the income and sets out how they will spend it, which is expenditure.

Now the words that have been highlighted there are also words that are going to be contained in our glossary towards the end of the lesson but let me just run you through those now.

So the first one is income.

That means money received, usually on a regular basis.

Expenditure is the money that is spent on services and a budget or budgets are the plan that sets out what you plan to spend during a period of time.

Now, the graph that you see on your screen is from, that his Doncaster council's budget from 2020.

And that's a graph that I put together to help explain that and to in a little bit more detail there.

Now you can look at that graph in much more detail as part of the worksheets that is attached to this particular lesson and that will help you in answering our next particular task.

Now there a few different things that are mentioned there on this graph that I should explain and one of them is council tax.

And that is the money that is paid to the council by households, depending on the value of there home.

Another thing that's mentioned there as part of the graph is business rates.

Again, this is included in the glossary at the end of our lesson, but that's a tax that is paid by shops, offices or pubs to local council as well.

Another thing that is mentioned is about central government funding.

And by that we mean the government that's organised from London.

So money that comes from London, from central government, sometimes referred to as national government, that's headed up by Boris Johnson, the prime minister, and given to local councils, local governments there.

Now I would like you to take this opportunity to pause our lesson for a second.

And I'd like you to pause our video to complete your task.

And your task is task three.

It's about Doncaster council's funding.

What I'd like you to do is using the draughts, I'd like you to explain the biggest sources of funding.

I basically mean by that income for Doncaster council.

Now, good luck with this particular task.

So well done for completing that task, that task number three.

And this is the feedback that I'd like to give to you because using the graph, you were asked to explain the biggest sources of funding or income for Doncaster council.

And this is the passage that I've written that I'd like to share with you.

Now Doncaster council's largest source of funding comes from central government in London and that's 219 million pounds.

This is followed by council tax which is 119 million pounds paid by households depending on the value of their home.

Now you can pause the lesson now and you can add to your answer to make it even better if you would like you can make your answer even stronger by using the feedback that I've just given you.

Now that leads us on to you doing something with this information and this knowledge that we worked through together about local councils and what do they do.

And I'd like you to take it to your own local council and really think about what your local council does.

And this is a takeaway task.

You're going to be investigating like a detective and I dare you to use a search engine to research the services that are provided by your local council.

I'd like you to consider whether you use a particular service and if it is provided directly by the local council or by a contractor, because what you sometimes find is that once a service might be paid for by local council it might be provided by an outsourced company, a private contractor, and a good example where that often happens is kind of your bin rubbish recycling collection, that type of thing is often provided by a private provider and paid for by a local council even though some councils might provide it themselves.

Now, well, what I'm going to ask that you do is that you complete the table and that leads us onto me showing you an example of this table.

Now this table is included as part of your worksheet.

So you can use it within the worksheet.

Alternatively, you can draw your own table out as well.

And I'd like you to research the services in your own local council.

Remember you're going to be using a search engine to research these services that are provided by your local council.

Now I would like you to focus in on four different services but of course you could add to this list and expand your table by using some of the services that we've talked about as well.

But I'd like you to look and focus in on road maintenance and I'd like you to focus on libraries in your local area.

And I'd like you to focus in on rubbish and recycling collections, as well as leisure centres.

Sometimes leisure centres might be referred to as like sports centres or swimming pools in your local area.

That type of thing as well.

Now across the top of the table, you'll notice a column that says is the service provided simple yes or no is good enough here.

Does your family use it? Now, here is what I would like you to ask people around you whether they provide the service.

So whether they use the service and that's just a simple yes or no.

And I hazard a guess that they may use almost all of these services as well, for some of those, you need those in order to be able to get to school even if you don't kind of go in a car or bus that uses the road, you probably walk to school and you will use the pavement at the side of the road, for example.

And then I'm thinking about the last column which is who provides the service, is it provided by the council or a private contractor? Now that might be very difficult to do but if you search the local council's website, you should be able to find out who actually provides that particular service.

I'll make this full screen so that if you aren't using the worksheets you can jot down the table now by pausing our lesson and having this to fill it in.

Alternatively, like I said a short while ago, you can simply use the table has been provided as part of the worksheet that is attached to our lesson today.

So good luck with the takeaway task as part of this particular lesson.

Now, what I said throughout our lesson is that we were going to introduce a series of terms and I've tried to clarify those as part of our lesson but I'm just going to go over them now so that we do understand them.

These are the type of terms that are going to be used in our future lessons as part of this wider unit about how does local democracy work.

It's really important that we have to stand up.

So firstly, local government, well that means the local councils that deliver services in a county, city or town, and sometimes they're known as local authorities.

Tax is a compulsory amount that's paid to the government to fund a public service, council tax, the money paid to the council by households, depending on the value of that home, business rates is a tax paid by shops, offices, pubs to the local council, council service is the help that is offered to residents, an example of a service provided by local government is council housing, income is money received usually on a regular basis.

Expenditure is the money that is spent on services and budgets are the plan that sets out what you plan to spend during a period of time.

Now remember budgets can be set by individuals, by families, by schools, but also local councils set budgets usually once a year as well.

I'll make this much bigger on your screen so that you could pause our lesson now and you could jot down any of those glossary words and terms that you may not understand as well.

So during today's lesson, we have done a variety of different things.

We've thought about why we should learn about this.

So why it's really important to learn about what local councils actually do.

And we've thought about why it's important particularly to Zac and his life.

We've looked at different types of councils in England and we've tried to consider what those local councils do.

So what local council services exist in your area and across England.

Then that moved us on to considering, okay, these services exist, but how are they financed? So the services are provided the by local councils and how they finance, so where does the money come from for them? And lastly, we've considered a takeaway task that you are going to be doing where we've been researching our own local councils and the services that are provided.

Now, I hope that you have enjoyed our lesson today.

Now, remember that you can share your work with Oak National.

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

The materials today that we've been using together have been provided from the Association for Citizenship Teaching.

Now, thank you very much for participating in our lesson today.

I hope you have really enjoyed it, and I've certainly enjoyed being your citizenship teacher for our lesson.

And this is just a reminder to please make sure that you complete the exit quiz now as well.

So thank you very much for participating in our lesson.

I hope you have a great day and join us for our future lessons as part of this unit of work about how does local democracy work.

Bye-bye from me, bye bye.