Symphony Question: Brexit is really happening

After our successful Young People’s General Election, we’re ask young people in our member schools across the UK question every week.

They’re called Symphony Questions and here’s our Week 3 result.

This week we asked two questions involving 3,000 pupils in 10 schools across the UK, we asked:

Secondaries: This week Brexit is really happening. What do you think the overall effect will be?

Result: I don’t care

Involving schools in Essex, Manchester, Norfolk and Suffolk, it’s a win for ‘I don’t care’.

Should we be surprised that young people feel fed-up with Brexit? Probably not. It’s an overwhelming victory for Brexit fatigue and a desire to move on with 50% of the vote.

‘Negative’ comes next with 26%, which would support the often touted observation that young people - as a generation - don’t seem to be big fans of Brexit. Whilst ‘Positive’ and ‘I’m not sure’ claim a very similar proportion of the result, taking 9% and 15% respectively.

Interesting then - on the day of Brexit itself - optimism is in short supply amongst young people, whilst a sentiment to move onto another subject reigns!

Primaries: Can you always trust the information on the internet?

It’s Safer Internet Day on February 11th, and to honour the occasion we’ve asked primary aged young people their view.

Involving schools in Norwich, London and Wakefield, it;’s a win for ‘No’.

With an extremely strong showing of 83%, it would seem that young people are very aware of the pitfalls of trusting everything you scroll across on your phone - maybe they could help teach the rest of us how to be better at it?

The also-rans were ‘Yes’ with 24% and ‘I’m not sure’ with 8% suggesting that there’s still some work to do to promote a critical awareness of information online.

Next week’s Symphony Question:

A recent piece of research says that 61% of people in the UK are dissatisfied with democracy. Are you?

Our New Year’s Resolution to our membership is to help them come up with relevant, engaging and thoughtful questions to help get all pupils having their say. Schools usually come up with their own meetings, but we’re giving them additional questions if they’d like them.

Following the successful trial of this form in our General Election Question Series, for 2020 we’ll be recommending a blend of action-led & topical questions to ask each week.

Want to get involved or suggest a question? Send us an email at membership@smartschoolcouncils.org.uk