Make Your Mark – Cardiff Youth Council

Hey everyone, happy Sunday!

Last year, one of the priorities which emerged from the Make Your Mark ballot and onto CYC’s agenda, was “Curriculum For Life”- this means that a large number of young people felt that the education they received at school wasn’t adequate in preparing them for the “real-world” challenges they would face after leaving. Not just that- the curriculum doesn’t prepare us for the challenges we face now, it fails to provide us with the skills and information we need to live happy, healthy lives; the emphasis on grades and exams is such that young people are increasingly unable to cope with the pressure.

We decided to conduct a survey on what young people thought of their PSE lessons, what content they think is missing, and how they think they could be improved.

The results were… interesting. Young people from different schools all over Cardiff took part, and the most notable thing about the results, were the inconsistencies that they showed us. There is no real structure, or any set curriculum for PSE, meaning there are huge differences in the quality of the teaching some people received- though quite a few people claimed they were happy with their PSE lessons, we question what this means when over half weren’t convinced… are some people just happy to have a free lesson which doesn’t mean anything, to do nothing in? Either way, it was unanimously agreed that there’s a lot missing from our lessons, from important topics like citizenship, first aid and mental health awareness to having a qualified specialist doing the teaching.

We turned the most important results into an infographic, which can be seen here; Infographic_v2 (4)

What do you think these results mean? Do you agree? What should be done about it? Let us know in the comments, or on Twitter, or Facebook!

Thank you to everyone who came to September’s meeting, and we’ll look forward to seeing you later this month!

Remember to share!

Mae and CYC 🙂

Hey all!

If you’ve been to any of our events lately, or seen us around the streets of Cardiff, you may already recognise these lovely little ballot papers- you may even have filled one in for us. Which can only mean one thing- it’s time to Make Your Mark! Yearly, these ballots are released to the local youth forums around Britain by the UK Youth Parliament, meaning young people have a say in what is discussed by members of the Parliament in their annual House of Commons debate. It also decides what issues will be campaigned on across the UK. Basically, this is pretty big stuff, and takes nothing more than a tick, or a click, to complete!

The scheme is the largest youth consultation of its kind in the UK. Last year, 875,000 11-18 year olds voted, the highest number of young people ever consulted as part of the scheme. But we think we can do even better, this time, and their target is to reach out to, and collect votes from 1,000,000 young people.

Cardiff Youth Council wants to make sure that we share this enthusiasm. Last year, the votes of 2,152 people were collected, a 6.9% turn out for young people in Cardiff. We can do better than that, right!? Especially when it’s so ridiculously easy to get involved.

For those of you who haven’t had a chance to fill out a ballot yet, here’s how it works– it’s super simple! The paper consists of a choice of 10 topics, which the UK Youth Parliament identified as key issues prioritised by young people. You vote for the one that you think is the most important, the one that needs the most focus (only one, one only, such a tricky choice!) When these votes are collated and counted, the top ones will be discussed by the Youth Parliament in the House of Commons, on November 13th as part of Parliament week.

Last year, in Cardiff, the top two topics voted for were Mental health, and Curriculum for life. This was the foundation of the two successful campaigns we have been running in CYC over the last year, which we’d be happy to answer any questions about, and will talk about in further detail in future posts.

If you’d like to vote right now, click here. Forward this link to any people, groups or organisations in your network of the right age, and encourage anybody you know to take part… let’s hit that target, let’s get Cardiff’s voice heard.

Thank you to everyone who’s taking part- hopefully we’ll see you on the 23rd, where our next meeting at city hall will be held, 4:30pm, be there!

Any questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch, email me at maegandaviesjohn@outlook.com, or get in touch on Twitter or Facebook! You can find out much more about Make Your Mark and the UK Youth Parliament here.

Thanks again!

Mae, Fiona and CYC 🙂