British Values Democracy

Democracy

For the past few weeks, we have been discussing what democracy  means in the UK.  We have found out that the word originates form Ancient Greece.

We have discussed the voting age of 18 and how some people want this raised to 16.  All the children could recognize the main political party leaders, although I explained that there isn't currently 3 main political parties now.  We have found out about the Houses of Parliament and the House of Commons.  The children realized that a great deal of discussion and voting takes place before the government can make a decision.  We will follow the forthcoming European referendum in the next few months. Britain has an important decision to make.

Today we thought about how we see democracy in our school.  I asked the children what they thought the Governors or myself didn't have the power to change. We decided that the curriculum and length of school holidays were decisions made by the government.  The children thought that democracy was seen at The Meadows in the following ways:

 

  • We help develop school policies including those on behaviour and anti bullying.
  • We help to decide which charities we would like to raise money for.
  • We have a say in what happens in our school.
  • We vote for who represents us on the School Council.