Our students prepare for the General Election

The political landscape can often be a source of confusion for many people, whatever your age. In the run-up to this week’s General Election, our Personal Development Team was on hand to help, with a series of activities and games held in our Learning Resource Centre (LRC) to help our students understand which party their beliefs align with as well as being a Voter Registration Champion to encourage students to register to vote, remember their ID and to vote.  

The Electoral Commission estimates that around 8 million eligible voters will miss out as they’re not correctly registered, whilst 4 million will miss out through not having photo ID. As a Voter Registration Champion, we pledged to help all of our eligible students get themselves prepared to turn out to vote on 4th July – all through a series of different games and activities, designed to help decode the political system and the election process.

The activities included:

• A decoding game, designed to help students understand what a parliamentary democracy under a constitutional monarchy looked like
• A Bridge of Lies style grid-based game where students had to cross from one side to the other focusing on the logistics of a general election, from what happens when one is called through to key dates and deadlines
• A tabletop game to help students understand each party’s manifesto and how that aligns to their own views through a grid based on answers to questions they were asked
• A card game inspired by Dobble to represent what forms of ID are acceptable to take to a polling station
• Cross the pond, where students had to list in order the stages to vote to across the pond, followed by a mock ballot

Steve How, Personal Development Manager, said: “We felt that these activities were important because the next government will play a significant part in shaping our students’ future learning and life opportunities for the next five years. The activities were designed to inform, and they created a lot of healthy debate.

It’s important to us at CRC to ensure that our students have a firm understanding of democracy and UK politics. Hopefully this activity will help our students to fully engage in the election and to use their vote.”

The General Election will take place on Thursday 4^th July. Polling stations will be open from 7am through to 10pm, giving you the chance to vote at your leisure throughout the day.

This is your chance to have your say in how this country is governed – so get out there and exercise democracy!