Citizenship and Parliament

Roger Frost looks at a web site where children can learn how parliament works (for The Guardian - April 2000)

Pupils can now debate topical issues and vote on Acts of Parliament using a website from the House of Commons education unit. If not for real - or just for fun - the site helps young people see how parliament works and tell their ‘Noes’ from their ‘Ayes’. It’s timely in helping to cover the new ‘citizenship’ requirements of the curriculum, so it could also win the teacher’s vote.

‘Act of Parliament' (www.explore.parliament.uk) - is an on-line ‘debating chamber’ that schools register to take part in. Like British Parliament, Bills in the chamber go through all the various stages leading up the final vote.

Only last term – tomorrows legislators might take note - a first Bill calling for draconian fines for smokers, was discussed and passed by the pupils of thirty schools. One of these was King

Harold School in Essex where teacher Malcolm Burnett reports that getting involved is easy. “The whole of the Act’s timing is set out for you, so you just log in at each stage of the debate. I got the class round, we debated the smoking issue and they used the PCs to email their opinions. The contentious topic and being able to read other people's opinions stimulated the kids to debate; most felt that smokers’ fines should be heavy while two held that people could not afford to pay them. They modified the fine system as a result.

“It was interesting that at first they thought they could make a decision immediately, but they soon realised that everybody had to contribute before the Bill could move to the next stage. They learned to hold a group opinion as well as an individual opinion and, talking to them afterwards, they had a better understanding of what's going on in parliament and why decision making takes a long time”.

The work fit in well concludes Burnett, “It cuts across lots of things that we do -  we use it in a ‘key skills’ unit with our pre-sixteens and it helps with ICT and communication skills. It's solved lots of things in one go.

At All Saints School, they similarly worked through the stages of the bill from white paper; first reading; second reading and committee stages. And as pupils did research, made speeches and discussed the issues assistant head teacher Mike Aylott found a good curriculum fit for the work. “The web site fits in well with political history in History as well as with the idea of formal debate in English. It gets pupils involved with democratic processes - we have a school council and elections for it which is another piece of the jigsaw”.

The trigger for these comes free from The Parliamentary Education Unit at the House of Commons. The website, produced by RM who won the tender to build the site has been extraordinarily popular – taking 300,000 ‘page hits’ a month - an impressive number for such a focused area. RM’s Finbar McGaughey says that its success comes from encouraging involvement, “It’s actually participative. Instead of just offering pupils information on the Internet, we’re trying to involve them. The smoking issue was pretty compelling and it gets them talking. They actually enjoy discussing it. It also opens up a whole lot of opportunities to explore the topic further. But that is very much the idea - to make the subject broad”.

Next term pupils can debate a new Bill on an environmental issue. To help schools pressed for curriculum time this term, the parliamentary process has been tweaked. It should make things easier says McGaughey “We have learnt some lessons and have shortened and simplified the process to retain interest”.

FOOTNOTE

Act of Parliament, happens at www.explore.parliament.uk