If the Representation of the People Bill goes through, our 16- and 17-year-olds will be able to vote, which the government hopes will get young people electorally engaged early.
However, too many school students, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, lack confidence or simply don’t believe politics is for people like them. We may only increase inequalities in who votes if we do not give them the citizenship education they need before this age.
This problem could particularly affect girls, as research shows they have significantly lower levels of political self-efficacy than boys - especially girls from less advantaged backgrounds. This gap , despite girls outperforming boys in .
What could be driving this trend?
One explanation is the use of traditional whole-class debates. These can , with some reporting that their contributions have been dismissed or ridiculed by classmates. If that’s the experience students take away from school lessons, we shouldn’t be surprised if they conclude that politics belongs to somebody else.
Getting young people engaged in politics
Until now, we have had little systematic evidence about which classroom approaches actually work and for which students. A recent shows that citizenship education provision varies considerably between individual schools, with fewer than one third offering weekly dedicated lessons and one fifth offering no provision at all.
Students at independent schools and state schools serving more affluent communities have greater access to wider citizenship opportunities, including political visits, contact with politicians, extracurricular activities and active citizenship projects. Across all English secondary schools where citizenship education is provided, it is often delivered by non-specialists and constrained by pressures on curriculum time and limited teacher expertise.
Addressing the gap
The was developed to address this gap. It has created a simple five-lesson programme, which has now been tested on more than 1,000 Year 9 students across five countries. The programme’s resources, which can be integrated into a range of subjects, are freely available.
As part of the G-EPIC research, with 253 Year 9 students across five English secondary schools that serve disadvantaged communities.
In a lesson about climate policy, students first read stories about ethnic minority women who had brought about political change. One story described Barbados prime minister Mia Mottley using international diplomacy to push climate action. Another followed Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah’s campaign to have air pollution recognised as the cause of her daughter’s death. Some students then moved straight into a class discussion, while others spent a few minutes discussing their ideas with a partner first.
Students who read the stories became more confident discussing politics. Those who also had time to test their thinking with a partner showed even greater gains. Among disadvantaged girls, this combination proved particularly effective.
Teachers involved in the G-EPIC research also reported feeling more confident about teaching politics. Many said the programme gave them a politically neutral framework for discussing sensitive issues and encouraged them to step back, giving students greater ownership of discussions rather than directing every conversation.
One reason why this matters now is that rather than watching the evening news on TV with their family, many young people are more likely to encounter politics through TikTok, Instagram, YouTube - complete with increasingly AI-generated summaries. Schools have become one of the few places where young people can explore political issues in a structured environment, ask difficult questions and learn how to disagree respectfully.
How citizenship is taught is just as important as what the curriculum covers. This work needs to start with making politics feel closer to students’ lives. Here are three tips on how to get started:
- Use examples that reflect the diversity of modern Britain.
- Begin with issues that students recognise before moving on to institutions.
- Give them time to rehearse ideas with one another before asking them to speak in front of 30 classmates
Normalising diversity of political thought
In an era of increasingly polarised politics, helping young people to understand that reasonable people can disagree may be one of the most valuable lessons schools can offer. Critically, the G-EPIC intervention helped students to normalise the diversity of political thought, moving the discussion beyond a simplistic “good or bad” dichotomy.
Schools also need to look beyond individual lessons. If we want young people to believe that democratic participation matters, they need opportunities to experience meaningful participation while they are still at school. That means giving students genuine influence over decisions that affect them, not simply asking for their views after decisions have already been made.
Schools cannot reverse declining political trust on their own. Nor can they shield young people from misinformation or increasingly polarised public debate. They can, however, give students something that is becoming harder to find elsewhere: the confidence to question, the skills to weigh up the evidence for different viewpoints and the belief that their own voice deserves to be heard.
Bryony Hoskins is professor of comparative social science at the University of Roehampton
