Prior to our online session we were given a variety of videos and online materials to use with pupils enabling a better understanding of how our government works; from the right to vote, local representation to parliament and the House of Lords.

We were assigned Lord Young of Cookham who had been a member of parliament since 1974 before moving to the House of Lords where he is now the Deputy Speaker.  Our pupils were encouraged to have questions prepared beforehand which were then asked in our 40-minute session.  We were all rather impressed with Lord Young as he answered every question despite not knowing what our pupils would be asking.

He explained the function of the House of Lords and answered questions about School Meals, the lack of Youth Clubs, on-line safety, mobile phones in schools, the early release of prisoners and laws to ensure sex offenders are appropriately punished.

Our pupils were fully engaged and reflected positively on their experience.  This led to further conversations about how laws are made and how we are represented in parliament.  We also discussed the different mainstream political parties and their key policies.

We recommend schools engage with this opportunity.  Our link advisor was informed we are an SEMH special school so Lord Cookham was prepared, as this opportunity has been created for all schools to access, and they can be contacted on learnwiththelords@parliament.uk

Caroline Kolek

Assistant Headteacher and SENDCo