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Politics at King Edward VI College Stourbridge
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Welcome to the course! You have probably never studied Politics before, but don’t worry – the main qualification you need is an interest in current affairs. This summer workbook is a chance for you to research some interesting aspects of politics ready to start in September. The key topics which you will cover in Year 12 are:
In Year 13 you will assess the political ideologies of Socialism, Conservatism, Liberalism and Feminism. The third key component you will analyse is politics in the USA.
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Within this booklet we have given you range of tasks to give you a flavour of the politics course. There is no expectation of any prior political knowledge but we ask that you are willing to have an open mind, work hard and be willing to develop your knowledge. One of the best ways to ensure you do well at politics is read and follow the news.
Teaching team:
Vinai Solanki – Subject Leader Politics Carys Spicer
Jane Jukes Dr. Matt Cole
For any questions on the course fell free to email the subject leader at: Vinai.solanki@kedst.ac.uk
Before you start the course in September, take a look at these websites, which will be a source of continuously-updated information for you on the course.
One of the more familiar political events is the weekly Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs). Find a recent session of it (or watch it live) on the Parliament website (parliament.uk) or on the BBC website(), and answer
these questions:
a) What issues were raised in Prime Minister’s Questions?
b) What were the differences between the parties?
c) Do you think this is an effective way to hold the government accountable?
PMQs is often described as a good example of the adversarial nature of the House of Commons. Watch an old PMQ’s before the Covid shutdown (either using the BBC page or find one on youtube). How is it different? Why do you think that is? Write notes on your answers. We will use this information to study Parliament and the political parties in September.
One of the most important things to know when starting out on your political studies journey is who the key figures are. There is a list of some of them below. Do some research to find out who currently holds each position and the most interesting fact you can find about them!
|Political position |One interesting fact |
|Prime Minister: | |
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|Chancellor of Exchequer: | |
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|Home Secretary: | |
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|Foreign Secretary: | |
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|Health Secretary: | |
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|Leader of Opposition: | |
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|Speaker of the House: | |
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Structure of Parliament
Parliament is the system which is central to the British political system. It contains three parts and eachpart has specific roles.
Watch the clip below and do some research to find out what powers each part has and which people are involved.
What are your political views??
Not surprisingly, in politics not everybody agrees with each other. We have a number of political parties within our system who reflect many differing political ideologies. The term ‘left vs right’ is often used in British politics and it relates to these differing ideas that political parties have in the British system. The diagram below gives you a basic idea of what is meant by the political ideologies spectrum and where certain political ideas sit on this:
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There are online tests you can take that will give you indication of where you sit on this political spectrum. These often churn out surprising results!
Follow the link below and take the test. Once you have done this record your top results here and bring this along with you in September. It is always fun to find out the wide range of political opinions in a class!
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Where do you think the following people stand?
Using the table below can you read some tweets of the following people. You might want to refer to them over the space of a week to get a stronger sense of what they say. In each case can you explain where you think they might lie on the political spectrum and why?
|Donald Trump |Marco Rubio |Jeremy Corbyn |
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|Priti Patel |Tulsi Gabbard |Nicola Sturgeon |
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|John Prescott |Ted Cruz |Elizabeth Warren |
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|Kenneth Clarke |Layla Moran |Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez |
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|Bernie Sanders |Rebecca Long-Bailey |Beto O’Rourke |
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On the next page you will find a table of issues. If you were running an election campaign which would be your most important and which would be least important. Have a think of why you have ranked them this way. We will discuss these when you start in September. Ask someone in your household to do the same. Do they agree? How you rank them should link to your ideologies test on the previous page.
|The level of immigration into |People who claim unemployment benefit should |The railways and energy companies |16- and 17-year-olds should be able|
|Britain is too high |have to do work for it |should be owned by private companies, |to vote in general elections |
| | |not the government | |
|We should have another referendum to|No-one should earn more than 100 times the |We should put more money into renewable|Parties should be required to have |
|confirm the terms on which Britain |minimum wage |sources of energy like wind turbines |more female MPs |
|leaves the European Union | | | |
|Private school pupils should have |President Donald Trump should not visit the |Everyone should do a year of national |Elections in Britain are not fair |
|less than a third of places at |UK |or community service | |
|Oxford and Cambridge | | | |
Interesting news stories
It is really important when you study politics that you can a keen interest in current news stories and political events so we would like you to record any political news stories that you think are really interesting and then bring these along with you in September. This will really help your overall understanding and will give you lots of material to illustrate the various topics in the course. There are so many interesting things happening at the minute so this task should be quite fun!
There are lots of places you can look for this information but here are a few suggestions:
• Daily newspapers – The Independent, The Guardian, The Times, The Telegraph, The Daily Mirror, The Sun – although these papers might all report the same political news you will spot that they don’t all report it in the same way or with the same emphasis. Many of these have free to access online additions so you don’t have to purchase a paper each day!
Extension task: Maybe see if you can find an example of two papers that report a story in two different ways and consider why this might the case.
• Online news outlets – BBC News, Sky News
• Social media – political journalists frequently tweet about developing news stories and it can be a really useful way of keeping up to date. The following is a suggested list of journalists from both British and American media:
• Laura Kuennsberg
• Isabel Hardman
• Isobel Oakeshot
• James O’Brien
• Daniel Dale
• Nate Silver
• Chris Mason
• Beth Rigby
• Owen Bennett
• Marine Hyde
• John Crace
|News story, date |Key details |
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Elections Research
Elections are a key part of politics. Some would say the most important as it is the only true barometer for how people feel. Using the results from an election we can see how people have voted. What is much harder to find is why people voted. Below are four elections. Ask people in your family who they voted for in each election and more importantly why they voted that way.
|Election |Result |Person 1 |Person 2 |
|1997 |Landslide Labour Victory for Tony Blair| | |
|2010 |Conservative majority for David | | |
| |Cameron. Coalition with Lib Dems | | |
|2015 |Conservative Majority for David Cameron| | |
|2017 |Conservative Minority for Theresa May | | |
Did you find that the people you asked voted for different reasons? It is very difficult to know what reasons are the strongest factor as people can change their justifications between different elections.
Here are some of the main factors which affect how people vote:
|Always voted that way |Like the policies of the party |Like the personality of the party leader |
|Like the local MP |Dislike everyone else |Their social class (Upper, Middle, Working) |
What do you think is the most important factor in how people vote? We will research these in much more detail when we start the course.
American Presidents
Part of your course will involve American Politics. We are currently in an election year so it is important you watch the news and are aware of how this elections is developing and how it is being fought. Many political academics argue that the power of the President is greater than the power of the British Prime Minister, and other world leaders. Therefore, the background, character, policies & events surrounding presidents are often highly for the American politics & worldwide affairs. You will need to know recent Presidents in detail, but also many from the 20th century are significant to your studies. Having some basic knowledge of the following people would be useful.
|Donald Trump 2016- |, impeachment |
|Early life- childhood,| |
|education etc | |
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|Career before becoming| |
|President – previous | |
|careers, other | |
|political roles | |
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|Presidential election | |
|– Who was his rival. | |
|Was it a closely | |
|fought battle or a | |
|huge victory | |
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|Key events during the | |
|presidency- | |
|worldwide/within the | |
|USA that effected the | |
|Presidency | |
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|Additional | |
|information | |
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|Barak Obama 2008-2016 |Clip/documentary - |
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|Early life- childhood, | |
|education etc | |
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|Career before becoming | |
|President – previous | |
|careers, other political | |
|roles | |
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|Presidential election – | |
|Who was his rival. Was it| |
|a closely fought battle | |
|or a huge victory | |
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|Key events during the | |
|presidency- | |
|worldwide/within the USA | |
|that effected the | |
|Presidency | |
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|Additional information | |
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|George W Bush 2000-2008 | brief overview |
|Early life- childhood, | |
|education etc | |
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|Career before becoming | |
|President – previous | |
|careers, other political | |
|roles | |
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|Presidential election – | |
|Who was his rival. Was it| |
|a closely fought battle | |
|or a huge victory | |
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|Key events during the | |
|presidency- | |
|worldwide/within the USA | |
|that effected the | |
|Presidency | |
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|Additional information | |
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@kedstpolitics
Political parties
Pressure groups
Elections and democracy
Voting behaviour
Parliament
The Prime Minister and Cabinet
The Constitution and the courts
The EU and Devolution
Politics students visiting Parliament, where we tour the Palace of Westminster and meet MPs.
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Politics students met BBC Political correspondent John Pienaar when they took part in a BBC Radio 5 Live broadcast from the Conservative conference at Birmingham. Before the 2017 general election they were interviewed for BBC TV’s Sunday Politics programme.
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Monarch
House of Commons
House of Lords
Key term – Ideologies
A system of ideas and ideals, especially one which forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy
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