Symphony Question: Are you dissatisfied with democracy?

After our successful Young People’s General Election, we’re asking questions of students from our member schools around the UK each week.

These questions are called Symphony Questions, and we have our results from Week 4!

This week, we asked different questions of primary and secondary schools, involving 2,000 students in 6 schools.

Secondary Question: A recent piece of research shows that 61% of people in the UK are dissatisfied with democracy. Are you?

Result: I’m not sure

Involving students from around England, the winner in this week’s secondary question is ‘I’m not sure’ with 55.5% of the vote.

In these turbulent political times, it is certainly understandable that young people don’t know exactly how to feel about democracy at the moment.

Overall, however, there seems to be a somewhat optimistic trend, as 29.9% of students said ‘No’, indicating that they are satisfied with democracy, whilst only a small percentage, 14.6%, answered ‘Yes’, indicating dissatisfaction with democracy.

It is good to see that although there is some uncertainty in how young people feel about politics and democracy today, the positive feelings seem to outweigh the negative.

Primary Question: 62% of people in the UK feel like their voice isn't listened to. Why do you think that is?

Result: Politicians Don’t Care

This week’s primary question involved students from London, Leeds, and Sheffield, who largely agree that ‘Politicians don’t care’.

The clear majority of primary school students, 50.2%, seem to feel as though politicians do not care what they have to say. One student contributed in discussion, ‘Politicians don't listen to us because they think our information is not helpful to them. They just do what they want.’

There are other responses that got a significant portion of the vote as well. 23.7% say ‘People are too busy’, and 17.7% voted for ‘People are too distracted’. On the topic of getting involved, another student added, ‘People are too busy with their families.’ It certainly is difficult to get involved in politics when you have other important obligations, such as those to your family, and children seem to be aware of this difficulty.

Interestingly, very few children believe that people aren’t trying to get involved in democracy, with only 8.4% saying ‘People don’t use their voices’. There seems to be a consensus that there is not a lack of interest in politics, but rather that there are other things that get in the way of people feeling heard by their leaders.

Regardless of the differences of opinion on these questions, it is good to see that young people have thoughtful viewpoints about democracy.

Next week’s Symphony Question:

It’s half-term next week. What do you think is the best way of spending the time?

Our New Year’s Resolution to our membership is to help them come up with relevant, engaging and thoughtful questions to help get all pupils having their say. Schools usually come up with their own meetings, but we’re giving them additional questions if they’d like them.

Following the successful trial of this form in our General Election Question Series, for 2020 we’ll be recommending a blend of action-led & topical questions to ask each week.

Want to get involved or suggest a question? Send us an email at membership@smartschoolcouncils.org.uk