The Blackheath High Mock Election

The UK General Election provided the ideal opportunity to educate students about speaking up for issues they care about and their right to political opinion. As 2024 has been dubbed ‘the year of elections’, with almost half the global population heading for the polls, we made the UK election memorable with the inaugural Blackheath High School Mock Election, designed to engage the whole school in an authentic and exciting real-time democratic event, complete with candidates representing the main political parties, hustings and a paper voting system.

Blackheath High School acted as a constituency and Sixth Formers nominated themselves as candidates representing all the main parties. They developed full-scale campaigns to gain support from constituents, students and staff. Creative posters were plastered (and sabotaged!) around the school, and parties used their campaigns to engage with issues like fiscal policy and the environment.

Each party created campaign videos to showcase their policies, referencing topical news stories (a milkshake played a large role in Reform UK’s video...) and encouraging students to be more politically aware of issues concerning Britain and the wider world. Live ‘Question Time’ style head-to-head debates allowed younger students to understand their voting choices and make informed choices, scrutinising the candidates with questions such as: ‘What are you going to do about child poverty?’ and ‘How are you going to improve the NHS waiting lists and fund the NHS?’.

Students also learned the logistics of voting – from registration, to how to use a polling station, to clear instructions on how to cast your vote on the day. At our Polling Station, voter turnout was high at 76%. With voting concluded by break time, the History and Politics Department counted the votes. As in the General Election, the ‘First Past the Post’ system was used to decide the winner – with the Liberal Democrats claiming an overall victory.

Deputy Head (Academic) Kristina Lewis adds, “In 2023, the number of UN member states with female leaders fell to 12, down from 17; in 2022 UN Women predicted that at the current rate, gender equality in the highest positions of power will not be reached for another 130 years. It has never been more important to spark political curiosity in young women – we used the mock election to inspire a generation of intelligent and empathetic young women to use their voices to speak up for issues they care about and we’re delighted at how engaged they all were.”
We reached out to politics expert and BHS alumna Margaret Jay, Baroness Jay of Paddington for her thoughts: “School mock elections are very important as they introduce young people to the importance of voting and taking an active part in our democracy. One of my granddaughters turned 18 in June, and so just qualified to vote in the General Election. Even though she is away on a post A-level holiday, I’m glad to say she insisted on getting a postal vote. Another important piece of education!”

We’d love to hear your political career stories with us and how you were inspired at school for a future feature on political alumnae.

Get in touch with alumnae@bla.gdst.net.