Although many of them won’t be able to vote in this week’s General Election, young people from across West Berkshire want to have their voices heard on political issues.
Following a hustings at Trinity School on Friday, June 14, a group of year 12 students spoke to the Newbury Weekly News about what was on their minds ahead of upcoming election.
Several of them believed that young people were a group in British society that were often neglected by politicians.
Hannah Biddulph said: “I think that often young people can be overlooked in politics because we can’t vote so often people don’t really think about what we have to say.
“I think personally some things that concern me are issues like student debt and if I want to access higher education, is that going to be an obstacle for me.
“I think anything that concerns young people should be addressed more by political parties because ultimately we are going to be the future of the country and our voices can’t be ignored.”
A few of them felt that they didn’t have the opportunity at school or at home to be properly informed on contemporary politics.
Hannah added: “I think that it is very difficult for young people to get educated about politics because our teachers can’t really talk to us about politics because it wouldn’t be fair and it would be too biased, but at the same time what we learn about at home is our parents’ opinions.
“We don’t really know a lot and that is where something like this [the hustings] is very good because we can get our own opinions.
“We can formulate what we want to think about things as opposed to following along with what our community agrees with.”
When asked if politics should be covered more in schools, Simmi Kundurthi said: “I think the conversation should be more open because at the end of the day we are the youth, we are the future of tomorrow and we will be the people who will be casting our votes.
“I think it is important that we are informed about different opinions, even if it might not necessarily sit with our viewpoint.
“We still need to understand that there are different viewpoints so that when we do go out into the world we can have proper conversations and discussions about how to bring about useful or impactful change.”
Discussing the hustings, Maggie Carvalho said: “I think in general I wanted to see the response that the representatives had to the issues we are concerned about.
“I wanted to see how their policies would concern us as well and how it would impact us.
“There are policies like national service that look into us contributing to society, but a lot of the times we aren't told how we are going to be benefitting.”
Many of the students found that the hustings—which was attended by representatives of the Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green parties—was very informative.
Zachary Hayton said: “I think today was important for us as well because a lot of us probably had little to no knowledge beforehand of what people [the parties] thought.
“It wasn’t a lot of information but it was enough for us to digest and understand so I think it was a perfect amount today.”
Izzy Johnson added: “I think today having them on stage was really helpful because you get to see how passionate they are about what they are talking about and how well they can relate things to us as well as how they align themselves with other people’s views and how well they understand what they are proposing for the next four years.
“I think that was really useful.”
The Trinity students were also unsure whether the voting age should be lowered to 16, an idea supported by Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer.
Hannah said: “I think it is very difficult to say because I think back to when I was 16 and I have always been quite a mature person but I don’t know if I would have been ready to vote and understand the weight of my vote when I was 16.”
Maggie added: “I also think that we have more exposure to certain issues now than perhaps we would have had at that age.”
