Lesson video

Hello everybody and welcome to lesson six in our series about how young people can make a difference in local democracy.

My name's Mrs. Baker, and I'll be taking you through today's lesson.

Let's get ready to learn then please everybody try and find yourselves some nice quiet space to work without any distractions.

If you're using your phone to work on please turn off you notifications, anything like that so you can really focus, and I will see you in just a moment to tell you what you need for today's lesson.

What we'll need for today's lesson is our brain to be ready to do some thinking, and something to write with and something to write on.

If you haven't got these things quite close to you, please feel free to pause the video now and go and get them.

If you have got them already then stay with me, and I'll take you through what we're going to do for today.

We're having a look at what is local democracy.

So have a bit of a recap and then look at what local elections are, what are local councillor is and who can stand to become a local councillor.

Then we'll start to think about whether or not 16 and 17 year olds should be able to stand as a local councillor.

As you know our entire unit for this section has been about local democracy and how young people can be a part of that.

So let's remind ourselves of what local democracy is.

So this is a way in which we distribute power through out the UK, and you can see if we split it up like a tree, that there are different brunches.

So we've got our national government, the UK Parliament, Scottish Parliament, Northern Ireland.

So that is not what we refer to as local democracy at all.

So we can ignore that branch of the tree for the moment, and we're going to concentrate on the other side of the tree, the local government branches.

Now local government can be broken down into different areas, and it depends where you live in which type of local government you live in.

So you could live in an area that has a County council, a district council, or a unitary or authority, so unitary authority means cross one body.

Then we also have metropolitan borough councils, London boroughs, town councils, Parish councils, and in Scotland and Wales, there are community councils as well.

So with regards to local democracy and who holds power locally, there quite a few different ways in which people can ensure they get their voices heard.

So what we're going to do today is think about what areas these local authorities, this local democracy has power over, and how young people can make sure their voices are represented within this.

So let's have a quick recap on what local democracy actually means to us.

So local democracy is about decisions made in your local area and how you can influence them.

The power to make decisions at a local or regional level in our villages, towns and cities and counties usually rests with local councils or elected mayors.

They make important decisions about local services, like rubbish and recycling collections, roads and often facilities like swimming pools, museums, and leisure centres.

So lots of these facilities are things that you and I use every day, and we don't even think about them.

For example one thing that's not listed there is street lighting, and every time we walk out of our houses, when it's dark, we hope that the street lighting will be working in order to make it easier to see where we're going, and local authorities take care of the street lighting.

So what our local elections then? Well they happen in your local area, and they elect the decision-makers at local or regional level.

It might be your county council or your district council, which provides services for a smaller area, including housing, waste disposal and local planning.

In London there are 32 boroughs with their own authority that are elected.

Councillors are the elected representatives who make decisions locally.

They are normally elected to serve for four years.

The local led area will be split into wards and each ward will have at least one councillor to represent them.

So when we talk about the decision-makers at local level, we're talking about councillors.

If we were talking at national level, we'd be talking about MP, but it's our local councillors that are really important to us in terms of democracy and decision-making, and these are the ones that we need to have, make sure that can hear our voices and that we communicate with.

And each area that you live in is called a ward and you will have a councillor for the ward you live in.

So sometimes there's two or three councillors, depending on how big the area there is.

Sometimes there might only be one, but there will be a councillor, especially there to represent the people living in the ward.

So let's have another look at the difference between local and national government or central government.

So a local government has powers in a very localised area, like a town city or country, but the central government has control over the whole of the United Kingdom on many issues.

Local government applies laws set by central government to parliament and local government decides how local services are run for example, our parks, our leisure centres and things like that.

But our central government, so our government upper in London in Westminster, are responsible for the security and welfare of the whole country, and they set policies that apply for all of us.

So the decision makers then in local government are councillors, residents that meet this, they are always local residents and they make decisions, but they have to follow the laws set by Parliament.

But central government, are decisions made by government ministers who are normally MPs or Lords and they run the government departments.

So here's a nice grid that pulls all that together for you and feel free at some stage to come back and pause the video and make a note of this if you think it's going to help you.

So what are activities or what role does a local councillor actually have? Well it's really important, and they have lots of things to do in their local community.

They represent an area, a councilor's primary role is to represent their wards and the people who live in it.

So that's why it's so important that a councillor knows the views of the people that live within their ward.

They provide community leadership of that area.

So they should have a vision, they should know what they want their wards and their town or their community to look like.

They develop council policies, so they create better services or they might think about the kind of policy for redevelopment, for improving the place that you live in.

And they take part in planning and licencing decisions.

So for example, if there's going to be a new building built, they would have to get planning permission and decide whether it's a suitable building for your area.

And they have to give out a licences for restaurants and taxes and people who want to run places that have alcohol licences.

So it's quite a lot of important decisions that are made by your councillors.

And actually councillors are not paid for the work they do.

They are volunteers, they work in a job and they're elected and they're volunteers.

They get some expenses but the role is actually unpaid.

So first task where everybody then today, I'd like you to use the information provided over the start of the lesson, and I'd like you to explain why local council elections are so important.

Okay so why is the local council important? Why is it important to elect the right people? The role of the councillor should be included in your answer and the services the council provides should also be included in your answer.

You can pause the video now and start to complete that answer.

And of course remember you can rewind and go back to any of these slides should you need them.

So here's an example of something that you may have written.

Of course your answer doesn't need to be the same as mine.

This just gives you a little idea of some of the answers you may have included.

Local council elections are important to the local community as the local government provides services to residents.

They include leisure facilities like parks, sports grounds, planning permission for buildings and waste disposal.

The local election is important as it decides who the local councillor will be.

Local councillors will represent an area, which means they speak up for residents in their ward.

Taking part in local elections means that you're part of a democratic decision-making process for your local area.

This means you help to decide how it should be run and organised and have a say in what services are provided.

So there you can see in the answer, we've explained what the local council does, what a local council is, and then why it's so important to take part in these local council elections, and really getting to know your local councillor and being sure about the person that you're voting for to represent you is an important part of local democracy because they're going to be making big decisions for you and what happens in your area, and it's important that you feel you can trust them, and that you think they're going to do right thing for you.

So lets do a little recap on things that we've learned about how old would you have to be to carry out certain responsibilities or have certain rights.

So at the age of five your parents have to make sure you're in full-time education at school or homeschooled.

At 12 if you're getting new passport, it must be signed by you and not your parents.

At 10 you have full criminal responsibility for your actions and can be convicted of a criminal offence.

At 15 you can apply for the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force at 15 years and nine months, but you will not be able to serve until you were 16.

Now all of these rights are agreed by most people and accepted, there doesn't seem to be much argument around them.

People feel that these are the right age legally and also in maturity for these things to happen.

But let's remember more recently in other areas of the UK, but not in England, there's been some changes to the voting age, with regards to the age that you can do that.

So if you live in Scotland, in Scottish elections you can register to vote at 14, and you can vote in Scottish Parliament elections and local elections.

If you live in Wales, you can register to vote at 14, and you can vote in the Senedd Cymru elections, and you can vote for your Members or the Senedd.

So in other words if you live in Scotland or you live in Wales, you can vote for their own parliaments and their local elections.

However, if you live in England or Northern Islands, you can register at 16, but you can't vote until you are 18.

Whereas in Wales and Scotland, you can vote at 16 or 17 years old.

So England has got a little bit of a difference.

So this idea of a right of the age you need to be is not accepted everywhere and some people in England are campaigning for the right to 16 and 17 year olds to be able to vote in general elections.

But what about in local elections? So if we can't vote in local elections in England, can we actually vote in, or can we stand to be a councillor in local elections? It appears not, even though in Wales and Scotland you can now vote, to be a councillor, you must be 18 years old.

You must be British or an eligible Commonwealth citizen, or a citizen of any member of a European Union, and that means that you have to have lived in the area that you want to represent for a year as well.

So it doesn't mean that you have to be a British citizen, you can be a Commonwealth citizen or a member of the European Union and living in the country or the local area you wish to represent for 12 months or more.

So even though in two of the areas of the UK you can vote, you aren't allowed to stand as a candidate, you aren't allowed to make the decisions.

So we're going to think today about whether or not that seems to be right.

So if local elections are so important, should young people being able to be a councillor? Well as we've just confirmed, though the law on voting has changed, and 16 and 17 year olds can votes in Scotland and Wales, you still have to be 18 to stand as a candidate in a local election.

Can you think of reasons to explain why a candidate would need to be 18 years old to stand for local elections? Can you think of any arguments, any reasons that other people might give to say that 16 or 17 years old is not old enough to be one of those decision-makers that has to make the decisions about the services within your local area or any other arguments about why people should not be able to vote for you below the age of 18.

So if you pause your video now and write your list, let's see what you come up with.

So, you could have all kinds of ideas on your list, but these are just some of the things that you may have thought of.

Some people might say you need to have experience of life to represent people locally all different ages, and at 16 or 17 you just don't have that.

Local councillors have to make important decisions, and those under 18 may not understand.

So there's a suggestion there that you wouldn't have necessarily the skills to understand the important decisions.

There are large budgets to consider when running a local council, younger people may not understand the value of money.

So suggesting that understanding how the money to be spent and the effect of what happens when you make cuts or overspend may not be understood by local people.

Younger people may not have the skills to support their residents with serious issues.

So one of your main responsibilities as a councillor is to work with your ward residents.

And if they have problems or concerns, it's your responsibility to bring those to the council and see what you can do for them.

If you haven't got enough experience, perhaps you won't be as good as doing that.

Another argument people might say is you do not have to be younger than 18 to represent the views of young people.

So in other words, you can still be an older person, but understand what young people think.

So for example if you were a ward councillor, and wanted to find out what your young people thought, you could arrange a meeting to speak to them people, and then you would be able to talk to other council members about that.

And in fact some people would argue that exactly what a good councillor would do.

They talk to every age group within their ward, so we don't need anyone younger than 18 elected as a councillor.

Some people would also suggest younger people can contribute to the work of the local council through youth councils and other ways.

So there's a youth council often in many areas, and we'll talk a little bit more about that in a moment, so therefore you don't need to stand for your local council.

Another argument we could make is that whenever an adult makes decisions that will affect you in any way, you have the rights to give your opinion and the adults to take this seriously.

Now this is laid down in the United Nations Convention on the rights of a child.

And as councillors, local ward councillors, often make decisions that do affect you, then perhaps it is very important for people under 18 to be represented as councillors.

So to see whether or not this is really important, we're going to have a look at the services that's councils supply.

Although young people cannot vote or stand to be a councillor, the decisions the councillors make are really important to young people every day.

On the next slide is a list of council services, and what I'd like you to do when you see it is make a note of the ones that you use.

So when you're ready, have a look.

So using this slide, write a list of all the services that you use in a week.

Pause the video now and complete that task.

Well that's a lot of services that your local council provides, isn't it? And I expect like me you realise that over the course of a week you use a lots of them, and probably most of the ones that I've highlighted here.

Now obviously we will in education, so education comes up.

I expect that some of you may visit a local library at some time or another, so libraries are there.

Many of us take advantage of the parks that are in our areas either to take dogs for a walk or go for a run or play football in or any other kind of activity, so parks and gardens are important.

Some of us may live in council housing.

So that's an important one to many people, rubbish and recycling, my goodness if that didn't get done, imagine what the streets would be like.

That's a really important one to everyone, not just young people, many children and young people are supported by social work.

So that's another important one many of you will have been able to say, yep I've had use of that.

Lots of people will use local museums and lots of schools, access local museums for support.

Another one the councils are involved with? Youth services so that's things like local youth clubs and activities that run.

So although you might not realise it, lots of things you take part in are organised by your local council.

The same with the leisure centre and lots of swimming pools, local councils look after those.

Now environmental protection, that's an interesting one because they do all sorts of things.

But one of the things you probably don't realise they do is making sure that there's infestations of rats or other things on our streets, so they keep the streets safe.

If the council weren't there taking care of those kinds of problems, our local environment would not be a very nice place to live in.

And finally there's trading standards and again you probably don't realise that we do use their services fairly regularly, but every time you go and buy something and you know that it's safe, that's trading standards.

When you go out and you know that you're buying something that's in a package and when you open it, it really is made by that company or it really is that item, that's trading standards that you can rely on, because they keep an eye on people bringing fake goods, they keep an eye on people selling things that are not authorised, they're also there if you needed to go to them to make a complaint.

So some of these council services are there supporting you in the background behind, without you realising it, and others are they're very obviously helping us every day.

So if all of these decisions and the things about funding and how these work being made by the local council, and you are having your decisions and your lives affected by them, then surely perhaps it would be important for young people's voices to be heard as part of these discussions.

So as we've seen people under 18 years use most of the services provided by the council, but even in Scotland or Wales where 15 and 17 year olds can vote in a local election, they're not able to be representatives themselves.

What I'd like you to do now then is using the information from the lessons so far, can we suggest some reasons why young people might be able to stand as a local councillor or should be able to stand? What kinds of reasons can you give me that would be a good argument to make to someone that would say oh, no, no, we should only have 18 year olds and over allow to stance the local councillor? Can you give me a good argument against that idea? Why should 16, 17 year olds be allowed to be voted for and represent the views of others on the local council? Pause your video now, and just complete that task.

So, some of the feedback or ideas that you may have included could be, service councillors councillors make decisions on affect the under 18s, so the unde 18s should be involved in these decisions.

Under 18s have a different viewpoint to over 18s, and if is not represented, there are no young representatives.

If there were younger people, more younger people take an interest in local democracy and the local council if they could vote for and be represented by people closer to their own age.

Having younger people as councillors makes the council more representative of the community as a whole, and ensures the voice of young people is taken seriously.

The UN convention on human rights of the child Article 12 says children have a right for the view to be given due weight according to the child's age and maturity, so someone is mature enough to represent others, they should not be denied the right do you so.

So there's some range of ideas then that you could base some arguments on about why it's important to have people under the age of 18 represented in local issues.

So this young man here is Nick Harris, and he was elected as a local councillor just a month after his 18th birthday.

And there have been a number of 18 year olds who've been selected to and elected to their local council, and they found the role very rewarding.

Jack Weeks and Ben Haines were two local councillors who entered politics very young, and they said they did so to make sure young people's views were represented where decisions were being made.

So there are people at 18 that are being voted for and being elected on to local councils.

So there is support for them, and there maybe support for people at 16 or 17.

So if this community for young people under 18 is not there, what else or how else is there to get your voices heard? Because as we've seen it's really important that you do take part in local democracy.

Well one option for many of you will be the Youth County Council, and young people can vote for and stand in this.

You may have already learned about this in lesson two of the unit of work we're currently studying.

Youth councils are a way of raising issues that young people feel strongly about with the local council.

Members of the youth council meet with members of the local council on a regular basis, to discuss issues for the area and ideas.

This is very important way of making sure young people's voices are heard even if they cannot vote in local elections or stand as a councillor.

Any young person can stand as a youth councillor and anyone can vote in the youth council elections.

So though it's not the official local council, when you're involved in the Youth County council, you do get to meet with the over 18 councillors, and you do make sure that children's views are represented, and you make sure that children's views are listened to on decisions.

So for that really in part the rights of a child Article 12 are being met.

But the question is, is that enough? A Youth Council is a democratic organisation created, run and developed by young people for young people.

They exist to represent the views of young people at local level, giving young people the opportunity to have a voice, discuss relevant issues, engage with decision makers and contribute to improving the lives of young people within their communities.

And that's written by the British Youth Council who oversee all of the youth councils in the UK.

So over to you now guys, it's your chance to say what you think.

Some of you may agree with the statement, some of you may not, as there is a youth council there is no need for young people under 18 to vote or stand in local elections.

Do you agree with this statement? Write a speech giving your view on this statement.

Use all the information from today's lesson and any other knowledge you have about young people and their role in democracy.

So do you think it's important to allow young people to be involved in local democracy by standing as a candidate and voting as a candidate? Or do you think the youth council, and talking to your local councillor is enough without making younger people representatives? Obviously I can't tell you whether you've done well or not on this task because it's your speech that you're going to be writing.

So what we're going to do is a self-assessment, so have a look at this slide now, and as you're writing your speech, use the self-assessment to complete whether you've reached these target areas or not.

Do you agree or disagree with the statement? Have you made it clear? Have you given examples of why you have your view? Have you supported it within evidence in other words? Have you given references to what councillors do and council services do? And have you explained whether or not you think youth councils make up for not being able to stand for election? So does the youth council do enough or is it just not enough for young people to be represented in the official council elections? Remember when you're writing a speech, you're writing it from your point of view.

So you can disagree or agree with this statement, and try and make it as persuasive as possible, by including as much evidence from the lesson today, as you can.

So we'll go back to the question, As there is a youth council there is no need for young people under 18 to vote and you can add in or to stand in local elections.

Do you agree with this statement? So brilliant opportunity for you to develop your speaking skills here, your oracy, and using our self-check success criteria, or self-assessment here to see how you've done.

So pause your video now and practise those speeches.

So, well done everyone.

I hope that you've got a brilliant speech made and I'd really love to hear it at some stage.

And I hope that you've seen just how important local council elections are and how important it is to make sure young people's views just like yours are represented somewhere.

Now you might think that it's okay to use the youth council systems and they are great system, so I'd love for you to find out for the take part section, find out when the youth councillor elections happen in your area and certainly votes in them, or perhaps even consider standing as a representative yourself.

And that will ensure that your views and perhaps views of other people that you know are definitely represented.

I'd also like to find out how old your local councillors are.

Perhaps you're in an area that has one of the very young councillors on the council.

Perhaps you could engage with that councillor and find out why did they go into local politics? What are their ideas? Are they happy to meet with other young people to find out what young people in your area really want? And then finally you could also try and write to your local ward councillor, to see if he's got any views on local people's ideas.

Maybe you could tell him something you're him or her, tell them something you're really interested in, in your local area and asked them what you think or what they think.

The best way to engage in local democracy is to engage with our councillors and be active.

So if you can find your youth council then please do, and also let your local council, your ward councillor know that you are there.

It's been great going through this final lesson of our unit together today everybody.

And I hope you know a lot more about democracy, and how you as a young person really can get involved.

Although a lot of the privileges of voting or standing for election are kept for people who are 18 or over, that doesn't mean as a younger person, you can't take any democratic action and hope after following these lessons, you understand just how empowered you really are.

It's not just all about the right to vote that means you can make a difference in your communities and nationally, there are lots of other ways in which you can engage, and I really hope that many of you will be.

As for today's lesson, I'd love to be able to hear your speeches.

So if you'd like to share your work with myself and your own teachers, please ask an adult to contact us via Twitter @OakNational #LearnwithOak.

So ask your parent or your carer if they can share your work with us, a little short clip perhaps of you making your speech would be wonderful.

And if they're willing to share that for you on Twitter, tagging in @OakNational and #LearnwithOak.

I'd love to see your views about whether or not young people should be able to stand as local councillors.

There's one last task for you to do before the end of the lesson everybody, so it's time to go and find the exit quiz to complete for this lesson, just to show exactly how much you've learned.

And before you do that I'd like to say, thank you very much for staying with me.

And I hope you understand just all of the things that you can do to engage in local democracy and how important that is.

And until we meet again and another citizenship lesson bye-bye for now and take very good care of yourselves.

Bye bye everybody.