After participating in Parliament Week, the children were really interested to find out more about the different local candidates and parties taking part in the General Election. They brought in lots of leaflets from home and we analysed the text, layout, pledges, facts and figures.
We decided to run our own mock General Election and we used our house teams to create four new parties: Transform, Vision, Tomorrow and the Progress party. We asked Year 6 to volunteer to stand as candidates and then with their house team, they chose from a selection of current policies to put on their manifesto.
Once our ‘party leaders’ had been chosen they went away and wrote their own speeches. We took the candidates to Kenton Primary School where they talked to the Year 6 children and explained their party policies. The children were given polling cards and then were checked against an electoral register before being allowed to vote. We set up a private polling booth and took a ballot box for them to post their votes.
The ballot box had been sealed and checked by our Chief Counter before we left Cockwood.
On return to school, the candidates spoke to their peers and tried to persuade them to give them their vote. We then repeated the voting process we had done at Kenton.
The final count was done by 2 of our ‘official counters’ and verified by Mrs Curry.
The vote was very close but the winner was the TRANSFORM PARTY! Well done to the green team.
