The Study of Politics must be live and meaningful, especially for Sixth Form students. Our approach has always been to ‘boldly go’ into politics and approach those running the country. We’ve found that not only do they have time for our students they gain a lot from the experience too.
It’s well worth engaging local politicians to get to the heart of gritty subjects on the national agenda and with the general election looming, we’ve decided to run a number of different events to help encourage students to become more active in political affairs and really bring the subject to life.
The rise of UKIP in 2014 has put the question of Britain’s membership of the EU as one of the major battlegrounds of the General Election next year. Rising levels of immigration and the dangers of another Eurozone financial crisis has led to more and more calls for the UK to ‘go it alone’, resulting in David Cameron indicating that the Conservatives would call a referendum on the EU in 2017, should they been returned to power next May.
A team of five politics students, who will also be first time voters in May 2015, set out to investigate both sides of the EU membership debate, culminating in the creation of a short video on the question “Europe: In or Out”.
The video was then entered in the Political Studies Association short video competition (Europe – In or Out) and it was shortlisted for the final prize. They had to travel to the House of Commons to present it to a jury consisting of BBC Journalists, academics and the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow. The team worked extremely hard, with the excellent support of Tom Butler, to turn over 4 hours worth of footage into the final 4 min video. From the initial shortlist the video made it into the final four, but despite high praise from John Bercow, they did not quite manage to win.
Back to all news
