Staffordshire Council of Voluntary Youth Services

MAKE YOUR MARK 2020

EVALUATION REPORT

SCVYS 42a Eastgate Street Stafford. ST162 2LY Tel: (01785) 240378 1. Introduction

Make Your Mark is an annual consultation for young people aged 11-18 run by the British Youth Council (BYC) and UK Youth Parliament (UKYP). This year, UK Parliament held a larger role in delivering Make Your Mark, and hosted the ballot page on their UK Parliament Week page.

Young people vote to determine which issues are most important to them from a shortlist of ten, which have also been determined through a process led by young people.

Members of Youth Parliament (MYPs) are invited to submit manifesto motions prior to the Annual Conference. This year the conference was held in September and was completely virtual. All the proposed motions were debated and voted on to establish which are added to this year’s manifesto. After the conference, MYPs were then asked to vote on the ten most important issues to them, and these made it onto the Make Your Mark ballot paper.

2. A year like no other

Due to the on-going Covid-19 pandemic, all voting in 2020 was conducted online. There was an expected drop in engagement due to online voting not normally being a popular option (it was removed as an option in 2019). The uncertainty of whether the normal calendar for MYPs would be available also meant that the process was delayed from the usual period of late August until late October, and instead run for a shorter period during November.

Any local authority, school or youth organisation working with 11-18-year olds is invited to take part in Make Your Mark. Pre-registration was available, however due to there being no ballot papers, there was no requirement for this. 3 schools in Staffordshire signed up before the consultation started.

3. Understanding the data

The ballot this year was split into two sections (see appendix 1). The first section allowed young people to select one national issue that was important to them. The second section was a list of issues that local authorities have the power to change and was compiled with the support of the Local Government Association. This is a further change from the free text local issue that was introduced in 2019.

Young people were asked to provide a postcode (and if they wished to identify their school or youth organisation) so that as many votes as possible could be allocated to a local authority area. When applied this information shows that 600 young people took part in Staffordshire. 528 voted for a UK wide issue and 547 voted for a local issue. In other words, not all young people utilised both of their votes. The breakdowns of the results of the voting can be found in the appendices including comparisons by district, county, region and national.

The different approach taken again in 2020 means that SCVYS is unable to fully compare the 2019 and 2020 figures with previous years when SCVYS has overseen an increase in local voting. (2016 – 2,998; 2017 – 6,648; 2018 – 7,076)

In the UK there were 181,366 UK issue votes and 176,356 local issue votes. In the West Midlands, there were 7,717 UK issue votes and 7,767 local issue votes.

2

4. Local organisations involved and total votes cast

Young people from the organisations below participated in this year’s Make Your Mark ballot across Staffordshire: 1. 7. Staffordshire Scouts 2. Erasmus Darwin 8. The Rawlett School 3. Fountains High School 9. Westwood Academy 4. Girlguiding Staffordshire 10. 5. King Edward VI School Lichfield 11. Staffordshire Federation of Young 6. Madeley School Farmers Clubs

SCVYS also asked their membership and partner organisations to share the link widely with their networks. The following organisations utilis