About the Digital Surgeries programme

Our aim: We want every young person to have a meaningful engagement with a politician during their time at school.

“It was interesting and a different approach to learning politics. I liked that we got to hear about politics from someone directly involved in it.”

Student, Jewish Community Secondary School ABOUT THE DIGITAL SURGERIES PROGRAMME

The Digital Surgeries programme reimagines the way that politicians engage with schools. The programme supports teachers to deliver engaging workshops and connects students and politicians using video conferencing platforms. It facilitates informed conversations that lead to tangible changes in communities.

The programme has been running since 2017 and has grown from a small pilot in Greater Manchester to a national programme operating across the UK.

Digital Surgeries takes four teaching hours to deliver; three hours of workshops followed by a one hour Digital Surgery.

HOW THE DIGITAL SURGERIES PROGRAMME WORKS

1ONLINE TEACHER TRAINING

We train teachers to prepare students to engage digitally with their elected representatives. Teachers design a scheme of work for students from our specialised resources and are trained to be expert facilitators for their Digital Surgeries with local, regional or national representatives. After being trained, teachers use our specialised resources to deliver three hours of workshops to their students. These can be delivered in a variety of ways, but the programme is easily integrated into everyday teaching as part of Citizenship, History, PSHE and Politics and also supports schools to meet requirements on Prevent, Fundamental British Values and Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural development (SMSC). The resources support young people to explore social and political issues, research the politician they will engage with and prepare questions for their surgeries.

2

WORKSHOPS 3 THE DIGITAL SURGERIES

Teachers deliver a Digital Surgery, connecting their students with politicians via Teams, Zoom or a similar platform. We arrange and facilitate the session, provide practical and technical support and lead on communications to promote the event. 4 PLEDGES

During the session, if a politician offers to do something on behalf of the students we log it as a “Pledge” and ask the politician to agree a time by which they will report back to the students. Once they have fulfilled the pledge, we help them communicate the outcome with the students that were involved. You can read about some example pledges on page 41.