IT'S Local Democracy Week this week (October 15-21).
West Lancs District Council is doing its bit by holding a mock debate for school children on the Monday in the actual council chamber.
During the morning session pupils from St. Edmunds RC Primary, Skelmersdale will be debating environmental issues. Burscough Priory Science College students will then discuss issues that affect the local community during the afternoon debate.
Each school will have to nominate a 'chief executive' for the day who will sit next to the Council's Chairman, Cllr William Cropper, to help run the mock meeting. All the other pupils will be referred to as 'councillor' during the sessions.
Of course, it would be completely wrong of me to comment on suggestions that the pupils will be infinitely better behaved than the grown-ups who usually fill those seats...
For more information, visit the Local Democracy Week website.
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Paul Cotterill wrote...
I attended the mock Council session with Bursough Priory students, and can report that I tried to behave as well as they did. I’m sorry to go against stereotype on that score.
I was suitably impressed by the intelligent questioning and commentary provided by the students, but I have to say I was little less impressed by the whole set up of the mock Council session.
In reality, the session was not a mock Council discussion about leisure service provision, but a presentation by a Council officer about leisure services followed by a questions on what is and isn't being provided - a mock consultation, if you like.
The way in which the session was run left out entirely the adversarialism inherent in the current way of doing things. You may or may not think this way of doing things is healthy for local democracy, but for students learning about how it's done currently, and taking a view how it might be done in the future, that was a big omission, and one not corrected simply by calling them ‘councillor’ . I would have preferred to see students really asked to 'debate' the virtues of different ways of providing leisure (e.g. in-house or out-sourced) at whom leisure services should be targeted etc. etc.
What we got instead was, I have to say, quite condescending towards the young people present, albeit very well meaning.
I have raised my views with Council officers and will be happy to be involved in discussing a better approach for next year. I'd also like to see the young people who attended this year consulted properly on that.
Posted by: Paul Cotterill | October 30, 2007 12:48 PM