Children will need to be given democracy lessons in schools from the age of 11 to help prepare them to vote at age 16, the head of the UK elections watchdog has said.
Democratic education will be rolled out to those aged 14 and over first, said Vijay Rangarajan, the chief executive of the Electoral Commission – but added that this will need to be expanded to make sure young people are ready to cast their vote.
He also said teachers will be asked to leave their politics at the classroom door in order to make sure students get the broadest understanding of the political system, and are not swayed on how to vote.
Speaking to The Guardian, Mr Rangarajan said: “We’re going to need teachers to be really good at leaving their own personal views a bit at the door here.
“And making clear, when they have got personal views, it’s just personal views.”
Mr Rangarajan said educators “will need really good materials and some guidance on how you can teach this stuff well”, ensuring that there are wide ranging debates about engaging political issues, as well as the mechanics of how the system works.
“I can see that quite a few political parties have concerns about partiality, so we’re spending a lot of time on how we make sure the material is really impartial,” he added.
It comes after Reform UK leader Nigel Farage claimed schools and universities are “full of left-wing prejudice” and “anti-Reform bias”.
A poll of 6,000 teachers, conducted by Teacher Tapp, indicated that more than 80 per cent do not believe the national curriculum adequately prepares young people to be able to vote at 16.
Mr Rangarajan said the government has learned lessons from the Scottish independence referendum, which gave 16- and 17-year-olds the power to vote. But he said democratic education was not good enough at the time to support it.
“The main lesson that we took was it was extremely patchy in schools in Scotland, so that’s why we’re working on the education stuff really early on,” he said.
“A lot of teachers said, ‘We don’t want to engage,’ in the run-up to the Scottish referendum, which was really quite sensitive. So teachers need some support.”
It was announced in July that the next general election will see 16-year-olds able to vote for the first time, as part of wide-ranging plans to “modernise our democracy”, ministers said at the time.
Labour’s manifesto committed the party to lowering the voting age for parliamentary elections to 16, in line with Scottish and Welsh elections. But plans announced earlier this summer go further in an effort to increase participation in elections.
Ministers have proposed introducing automated voter registration, which is already used in Australia and Canada, and making UK-issued bank cards an accepted form of ID at polling stations.
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said “far too many people” had been put off voting by the voter ID rules introduced by the previous government, with the Electoral Commission finding around 750,000 people did not vote due to a lack of ID.
Sir Keir Starmer said it was “important” to lower the voting age, as 16-year-olds were old enough to work and “pay in” through tax, so should “have the opportunity” to say how they wanted their money spent.
But a poll of 500 16- and 17-year-olds conducted for ITV News by Merlin Strategy found only half said they thought they should be allowed to vote, and only 18 per cent would definitely vote.
Labour stood to gain the most, with 33 per cent saying they would back the party, while 20 per cent said they would choose Reform UK and 18 per cent the Greens.
Naomi Smith, chief executive of campaign group Best for Britain, said the change was “a brave choice set to benefit generations to come”, and urged political parties to “do more to win the votes of the UK’s young people”.
But in the Commons, Conservative shadow communities minister Paul Holmes accused the government of being “hopelessly confused” about the age of majority.
He said: “Why does this government think a 16-year-old can vote but not be allowed to buy a lottery ticket, an alcoholic drink, marry, or go to war, or even stand in the elections they’re voting in?”
