Getting kids keen to vote
Keen future voters from Silverdale Primary are taking part in the record-breaking Auckland Council’s Kids Voting programme.
For the first time, a total of 93 year seven and eight students have signed up to learn about local democracy and voting at the upcoming election.
Silverdale Primary’s team leader, Glen Savage, is confident about the programme, saying it will ‘‘stimulate awareness with the children and their families and will allow the students to feel confident when they become eligible to vote.’’
The programme is designed for students aged 11 to 15 and gives young Aucklanders a chance to gain knowledge of local government. During several weeks the students will do a number of activities that educate them about local issues and candidates. They will then cast online votes in mock classroom elections on September 23 and their results will be announced at the same time as the final election results on October 13.
Auckland Council’s Marguerite Delbet is happy more children and schools are getting involved.
‘‘A total of 11,500 students from 56 schools have signed up this year compared to 8,316 students from 44 schools in 2013. This is a positive sign for the future,’’ she says.
Kids Voting is one of the ways the council hopes to support participation, stimulating awareness and discussion among students’ families and friends about the importance of voting.
‘‘The programme will be a great learning experience for the children, we will look into local issues and how to deal with them, and hopefully get a candidate to come in and talk to us. This will encourage the children to make informative decisions,’’ Savage says.
Another school taking part in the programme is Waitoki School with a total of 13 students from years seven and eight.
Teacher Chelsea Brown says they will be running the programme in conjunction with their persuasive speech assessments.
‘‘It will be really interesting to see how the learning process with the elections will enhance their speeches and how they get points across, use body language and use their evidence,’’ Brown says.
Currently local elections are by postal vote, but Auckland Council supports moving to online voting.