GFTU BGCM 2019 Minutes

as well as be critical of the media and be able to understand how politics in the

workplace and unionism works, which at the moment does not exist. Then if

the students want to go further they can join the student union and campaign

on either national issues or local issues, which some have already started

doing from this pilot, and also write articles and get that student voice, because

the idea is to get them used to voicing and expressing themselves, because it

is the next generation that are inheriting this country, so they have more at

stake in what is being decided now than anybody.

The impact of the pilot has been pretty much a resounding success. Just a

couple of snapshots. We have had about 50/50 female and male gender split.

93% of the students said that they would recommend this course to a friend

and overall how they rate this course, 59.8% said excellent with 33.3% saying

good. Just to give you a bit more dive into the figures, we asked a question: “I

am confident that if a problem facing my local community arose I would be able

to work with others to resolve it”. This was a scale question from one being the

lowest to five being the highest and this was pre doing the workshop and pre it

16.98% answered four or five. Post that jumped to 65.22% who believed they

were very confident in being able to tackle an issue within their local

community. Just to give you another example, another question we asked

was: “I understand the main institutions of British, local and international

Government”. Again, only 22.64% answered four or five and, therefore,

answered confidently that they understood the main institutions. Post survey

that shot up to 82.61%, so a clear increase in their understanding of our

politics, an understanding of our Government as well as an understanding and

confidence in being able to deal with issues if they arose in their local or

national community.

Some of the feedback from the schools that we had on the platform, these are

three that gave us quotes. The Wren School: “Students have loved using the

platform. They found it easy to navigate once logged in and have enjoyed the

content”. They put 70 students forward. Christopher Whitehead Language

College put 329 students forward and they have completed all the course and

that was all of their year 10s by the way. Salvatorian College which is just

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