Improving democratic education framework

The Electoral Commission and democratic education

The Electoral Commission is the independent public body which oversees elections and regulates political finance in the UK. We work to promote public confidence in the democratic process and ensure its integrity.

The Voter Education and Partnership team provides engaging, accurate and impartial information about democracy, elections and voting so that eligible and future voters can cast their votes confidently.

Our education work aims to promote greater consistency in democratic education, increase young people's knowledge and understanding of democracy and elections, and increase educators' understanding of and confidence to deliver this topic.

Our recent research report, Young Voices on Democracy, highlighted that young people don't currently have the knowledge they need to be confident about politics and voting.

Less than a third know a lot about what the UK government does, and only half of those yet to vote feel confident about the process. There is a clear need for more democratic education in schools and colleges to support young people to become informed, engaged voters: only a third of school age children said they learnt about politics at school in the last year, yet almost three quarters told us they wanted more opportunities to do so.

We are currently focusing on the following initiatives to help us achieve our aims:

• Youth Voice Network: our youth engagement network is made up of 60 young people in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. This group of young people feed into our education work and develop resources to support their peers to learn about democracy.
• Education resources: we have developed resources - including a scheme of work for schools, and activities for youth groups - aimed at supporting young people across the UK to learn about democracy and elections
• Welcome to Your Vote Week: every year we hold Welcome to Your Vote Week, which encourages young people and educators to engage in democratic education and to start the conversation about upcoming elections.

We are now looking to work with civil society organisations to develop and evaluate projects that will increase democratic education in schools, colleges and youth settings.

Please see attachment for Welsh translation.