My students voted overwhelmingly for Reform

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When we had the Brexit vote they also voted for Brexit- large academy 9-18- Southern England

If anything I would say the school promoted Labour

So that is our poll prediction, although certainly not what I hope for.

I agree with this. Who shares the best memes. But children are not able to vote so in this election it is irrelevant.
Teenagers always seem to be attracted to extreme parties.

@Mumoftwo1316 "The thought of giving 16yos the vote still fills me with horror. They are so, so young. No nuance, no real empathy. I think it's an utterly disastrous idea and if anything I'd be a fan of raising the voting age rather than lowering it".

I totally disagree. Enfranchising 16 and 17 year olds is a good move for democracy. Our society thinks they are old enough to join the army, work full time and consent to sex, so why not vote?

The level of sophistication in the political thinking of millions of older people is hardly any better than you describe, tbh.

Politics isn't impartial and schools aren't run by robots, there has been lots of talk and discussion in the weeks leading up to this, a lot of the teachers will be voting labour.
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School is good if it tries to teach student to evaluate opinions and come to their own decision.

The eagle eyed amongst you will know from my username that I won't be voting labour.

Completely agree - I spend part of my time in France, and when my husband was alive and a regular user of health services (chronic conditions) we never ceased to be impressed by how efficient, how patient focussed and how effective the French system is.

The French pay way more for their healthcare. Are people in Britain prepared to pay much more?

Our society thinks they are old enough to join the army, work full time and consent to sex, so why not vote?

That's not exactly true. Not allowed to work full time, the rule is education until 18 (I know this isn't enforced) can't completely consent to sex, for example can't consent to have sex with someone in authority/teacher/coach/etc . I don't know enough about the army but can't imagine they go front line at 16.

And France has co pays. The French government generally refunds patients 70% of most health care costs, and 100% in case of costly or long-term ailments.

You have a lot of time to scrawl through everyone's posting LOL. I have worked in the cybersecurity industry for over 10 years and yes I was unemployed temporarily after having my baby. Both can be true :-)

In a previous recent company we had a lot of internal analysts looking at nation state hacking. During broader analysis, one of the trends analysts saw was Russia trying to influence national elections globally, including tactics such as using forums just like this to amplify the voice of fringe disrupters. They went to some length to make their posters seem genuine.

Anyway those types of trends are documented very well publically so I don't need to tell you that. What I did notice was all the threads suddenly popping up about Reform. Yes there is an election tomorrow, but it follows trends we saw before. Maybe this thread is genuine, but unlikely they all are IMO judging what we saw previously. Just telling everyone to be on guard.

Members of the French healthcare system are charged €7.50 to see a general practitioner and €15 to see a specialist. These fees are set on a national level by the government. Patients who are not part of the system pay €25 for a GP and €50 for a specialist visit.
If a patient in France’s healthcare system visits an emergency room but is not admitted to the hospital, they are charged a fixed fee of €18. A patient who is admitted to a public hospital is charged €18 per day for bed occupancy and will have between 80% and 100% of the treatment costs reimbursed, depending on their illness and the treatment.

All the teaching staff I know vote Labour and they are very vocal about it. I'd say they push it to the students.
During the Brexit run up, one of them was presented by her students with a mocked up picture of Farage dressed as Hitler. I doubt they did this without some sort of background comments from the teacher.

This.

I believe that a high number of Labour voters want the NHS to improve as we all do. But without personally having to pay towards it.

As coined by Thatcher but ever true “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”

You're quite right; I omitted some of the nuances because they made my argument less punchy.

Our school was predominantly Green (leafy home county suburbs if that makes a difference) followed by reform, which was predominantly led by Y8 boys with "strong" views. We were all made aware we have to remain impartial before mock campaigning began, and were briefed in staff meetings about the "strong" views of y8 boys so I have put 2 and 2 together to get Social Media.

I don't think they should have the vote at 16, but I do think it is important to involve young people so that they do vote when they are old enough.

I do agree with you when you said that age doesn't equal capability. It is also not just the young that are influenced by Tik Tok/Facebook

Because that’s what teenagers always do.

Good for them.

It’s encouraging to hear that teenagers are still willing to piss their teachers off by rejecting attempts to make them think & vote the ‘correct’ way. Independent mindedness is a good thing.

I don't think doing what TikTok tells you counts as independent-mindedness. Rather the opposite.

There are plenty of 60 odd year olds with all the nuance and empathy of a teaspoon. Farage among them.

One of the best editions of Question Time was one with an all young audience. They were so eloquent and engaged.

It's older folk that fucked the younger folk over in the referendum so it goes both ways ways.

Pffft. They probably did it to annoy adults. Just like our school voted Monster Raving Loony Party when I was a teen. (And then the school announced to the local paper that we'd voted whichever sensible party came second as they didn't want people thinking our school was full of idiots😂)

My kids are first time voters in a GE, and I'm pretty sure none of them are voting Reform. I'm quite impressed by how seriously they're taking it. Definitely far more mature than I was my first time voting in a GE!

Where in southern England is key - the old UKIP/Brexit strongholds are now Reform.

Sure, you can get dickheads at any adult age and in any demographic. My point was that even the "best" 16yos I've met, the most well informed and most well-meaning, had little empathy and nuance. I think it just isn't developmentally likely at that age.

As for eloquence... please. I've taught at Eton-type schools most of my career. So many precocious and "eloquent" students who can debate a good debate but clearly know nothing of real life [yet]. Eloquence is really not a necessary or sufficient requirement for good judgement.

My daughter is in Year 7. They did a mock election. Children interested in politics represented the parties that they wanted to.

My daughter said Reform were overwhelmingly the winners - because they said they will fix the NHS! Nobody voted for labour as they would raise taxes.

Led to an important discussion around what politicians say versus what they can actually do. And a discussion around high taxes and stronger public services or lower taxes and less services.

Im glad the school vote sparked her interest but concerned about how she came home really believing Reform would “fix” the NHS and they are the party that care!

There are people who are swayed by policies and people who are swayed by ideology or personalities. I would say the younger generation are possibly the former because they don't understand how nasty Nigel Farage and his ilk are, and also don't understand how evil the meaning is behind his policies (and don't see that we need immigration).
The middle aged people who liked bumbling old Boris and thought him charming are in the latter group so one is not necessarily better than the other!

I don't vote strictly on policies because a) I know about different parties track record and b) some parties just won't get in however much I like the policies.

Don't worry, if their parents vote Reform, Labour will get in!

Yes, the social media campaigns have targetted and influenced many young voters.