UK Parliament Week: Understanding Politics and Parliament

As part of Parliament Week, we were incredibly lucky to have Mr Wilkins from Queen’s College come and visit us today. He spoke to Key Stage 2 all about politics and our parliamentary system. We learned about the Houses of Parliament, including the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Mr Wilkins introduced us to Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer who we now know as the leaders of the Conservative and Labour Party. To make this a bit more understandable for us, we thought about a football analogy to understand the term ‘opposition’.

We learned that the House of Commons is where Members of Parliament (MPs) sit and that this is an elected position. Did you know that there are 650 MPs that represent us in the Commons? We also have the House of Lords which is an unelected chamber but Mr Wilkins explained to us that this chamber provides ‘checks and balances’ which makes sure that the House of Commons is held accountable and they can discuss any bill that comes through.

We looked at a map of the results from the 2019 election and had lots of questions about the data. This is where we learned about the SNP and Plaid Cymru too, which represent parts of Wales and Scotland too. We had an opportunity to vote for our own government here in school and cast a vote for the party we’d most like to win… The Pizza Party! We know that in a real election, it would be a ‘secret ballot’ and you can only vote once.

We then had some time to ask Mr Wilkins questions about politics and lots of us had some really interesting and thought-provoking questions. It was great for us to learn more about democracy in Britain, as we have been learning more about our British Values.

We would like to say a huge thank you to Mr Wilkins for coming to speak to us today!

What did you learn during our assembly with Mr Wilkins?