I did A Level Politics. I sat exams on the electoral system, on pressure groups, on the structure of Parliament. And I still left school barely understanding how UK democracy actually works in practice, how a bill becomes law, what my MP could and couldn't do for me, how to tell a credible political claim from a misleading one. If that gap existed for someone who chose to study the subject at A Level, I started to wonder what the gap looked like for everyone who didn't. That question is the reason More Political Education exists.

It turns out this is not just a personal impression. It is backed by some fairly stark evidence.

The turnout gap tells its own story

At the 2024 general election, overall turnout fell to 59.9%, nearly matching the post-war low of 59.4% set in 2001.1 But that national figure hides a much starker divide. According to the British Election Study, around 65% of 18- to 24-year-olds voted, compared with almost 89% of those aged 66 and over -- figures drawn from reported turnout, which consistently overstates the real number.1 That gap has been widening steadily since the 1990s.2 Registration tells the same story from a different angle: only about 60% of 18- and 19-year-olds are registered to vote, against 96% of people over 65.3 Surveys using other methods put youth turnout far lower than the reported figure: Ipsos estimated that 47% of 18- to 24-year-olds voted in 2019, against 74% of over-65s, and in recent elections the gap between the two groups has run at 20 percentage points or more.2 Whichever measure is used, it points the same way: a large and growing gap between how engaged young people say they are and whether that translates into a vote.

This is not because young people care less about the world. Concern about housing, the cost of living and climate change is not in short supply among people in their teens and twenties. The problem is closer to home. Many simply never received the basic democratic education that would show them how to turn that concern into a vote, an email to a representative, or a campaign that actually changes something.

The evidence that citizenship education works

Here is the part that should matter most to policymakers and sceptics alike, because it moves the argument beyond assertion. Research published in 2025 by Henn, Sloam and Nunes for the Association for Citizenship Teaching compared young people who studied GCSE Citizenship Studies with those who did not. The differences were substantial. Those who had studied it reported higher political interest, 63% compared with 47%, greater engagement with the news, 64% compared with 54%, and more confidence in their own political understanding, 71% compared with 64%. They also reported higher trust in democratic institutions, including government, media and Parliament.4

Two caveats are worth stating plainly. Pupils choose whether to take the GCSE, so those who opt in may have arrived more politically interested than their peers, and the research was published by an organisation that campaigns for the subject. But the gaps are wide, and they are widest precisely where the case for intervention is strongest. The effect on reported political interest was largest among young women, students from racialised minority backgrounds, and working-class students.4

In other words, this is not a subject that merely transmits facts about how Parliament works. Done properly, it appears to build the confidence and trust that turn a disengaged bystander into an active citizen.

A patchy, inconsistent system

Despite this evidence, provision in England has long been inconsistent, which matches exactly what I experienced. Citizenship has been a statutory National Curriculum subject at Key Stages 3 and 4 since 2002, but in primary schools it has only ever been a non-statutory framework schools can choose to follow, or ignore.5

There is a further gap that rarely gets mentioned, and it is a large one. Academies and free schools have not been required to follow the National Curriculum at all,6 and most secondary pupils in England now attend them. For the entire period described above, citizenship was therefore mandatory only for the minority of secondary pupils taught in maintained schools. The Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026, which received Royal Assent in April, closes that gap by requiring academies to teach the National Curriculum too.7

Even where it has been compulsory, parliamentary committees have repeatedly found the subject under-prioritised, patchily taught, and inconsistently inspected. The House of Lords Liaison Committee concluded that Ofsted was misinterpreting the government's own policy on citizenship education, and called for a full statutory entitlement from primary through to the end of secondary school. The government rejected that conclusion and said it was satisfied with Ofsted's approach.5

The postcode lottery this creates is significant. Whether a child leaves school understanding how to register to vote, how to hold power to account, or how to distinguish a credible claim from a misleading one has, for years, depended largely on which school they happened to attend and whether that school chose to prioritise it. I was fortunate enough to study Politics formally. Most young people never get that option at all.

Change is coming, but slowly

There is genuine reason for optimism here. Following the government's Curriculum and Assessment Review, ministers confirmed in November 2025 that citizenship education will become compulsory in primary schools for the first time, covering democracy and government, law and rights, financial literacy and media literacy.8 The reform is explicitly linked to the government's commitment to lower the voting age to 16, on the basis that pupils should have consistent democratic education behind them before they gain the right to vote.

This is a meaningful step. But it is worth being honest about the timeline. New programmes of study are not due to be published until 2027, with the new primary requirements taking effect from 2028, and reformed GCSEs following in 2029 or 2030.9 A child starting secondary school this September has already missed the primary reform altogether, and will not encounter the strengthened secondary curriculum until Year 9 at the earliest, though they may just catch the reformed GCSE at the end of it. Policy has moved in the right direction, but it has not moved quickly, and there is a whole generation of young people currently in school who will pass through it having had, at best, a fraction of what is being promised.

Why this matters beyond the ballot box

Political education is often framed narrowly, as being about voting and party politics. That framing undersells what is actually at stake. Understanding how democracy functions is also about knowing how to challenge a decision made by a local council, how to read past a misleading headline or a manipulated statistic, how to organise with others around a shared concern, and how to understand the difference between a policy claim and a promise. These are not niche skills for future politicians. They are basic tools for navigating adult life in a democracy, in the same way that financial literacy is a basic tool for managing a bank account.

There is also a fairness argument that is too often missing from this debate. Young people from wealthier backgrounds, or with politically engaged parents, are far more likely to pick up this knowledge informally, around the dinner table, through family conversation, or through extracurricular opportunities. Research on the 2024 election found that young people from poorer households were significantly less likely to vote than their better-off peers, and less likely than young people from similar backgrounds thirty years ago.10 Without political education embedded consistently in the curriculum for every child, regardless of school or background, this becomes another quiet driver of inequality, one that determines not just what young people know, but whether their voice is heard at all.

What this looks like in practice

None of this requires turning classrooms into debating chambers or asking teachers to take sides on contested issues. Good political education is scrupulously non-partisan. It teaches the mechanics of how decisions get made, the skills to evaluate competing claims, and the confidence to participate, without telling anyone what to think.

This is what we try to do at More Political Education. Our classroom mock election (opens in a new tab) walks through how the electoral system actually works without endorsing any party, and it is the same resource we used when we ran a mock election with a Year 6 class earlier this year. Our explainer on how a bill becomes law (opens in a new tab) breaks down a process most adults, let alone young people, have never had properly explained to them. And our guide to evaluating political claims (opens in a new tab) gives readers practical tools to tell a credible statistic from a misleading one, useful to a future Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat or Green voter in exactly the same way.

That is the gap this initiative exists to help fill, not by waiting for curriculum reform to catch up by 2028, but by giving young people that grounding now, in plain language, without an agenda. Democracy only works if the people inside it understand how it works. I left school without that understanding, despite studying the subject directly. Far too many people leave without ever being taught it at all.

Josh Dolan, the author of this article, is the founder of More Political Education (opens in a new tab), a youth-led, non-partisan campaign for stronger political and civic education in schools across the UK. The campaign publishes free classroom materials, including a ready-to-run mock election for primary, secondary and sixth-form groups, an explainer on the legislative process and a guide to evaluating political claims, alongside a proposal for how consistent civic education could be delivered across key stages.

Footnotes

  1. Electoral Reform Society, Briefing on Votes at 16 (2026) (opens in a new tab), 12th February 2026. 2

  2. Economics Observatory, What do we know about voter turnout in parliamentary elections? (opens in a new tab), 30th July 2024. 2

  3. Electoral Commission, Who is and isn't registered to vote (opens in a new tab), undated.

  4. Association for Citizenship Teaching, Written evidence submitted by the Association for Citizenship Teaching (opens in a new tab), 30th May 2025. 2

  5. House of Lords Library, Teaching citizenship and life skills in schools (opens in a new tab), 1st September 2023. 2

  6. House of Commons Library, The school curriculum in England (opens in a new tab), 21st November 2025.

  7. UK Parliament, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 (opens in a new tab), 29th April 2026.

  8. Department for Education, Government response to the Curriculum and Assessment Review (opens in a new tab), 5th November 2025.

  9. Association for Citizenship Teaching, Citizenship strengthened in the national curriculum: what this means for schools (opens in a new tab), 6th November 2025.

  10. Resolution Foundation, Britain's deepening turnout divide (opens in a new tab), 7th February 2024The Conversation, Young people led surge for smaller parties but no Reform 'youthquake', says UK election survey (opens in a new tab), 12th July 2024.