Next steps

Following these findings we want to go on explore the following opportunities and questions:

• Given the positive experience of students and teachers delivering the preparatory materials, we want to pilot developing a longer version of the programme that acts as a “minimum offer” on democratic education in schools that can help to ensure that all young people get an opportunity to learn about politics. • Following our findings around group size and our ambition to ensure that all students in a school get the opportunity to engage with political contact, we will look to pilot a range of models that balance the need to engage for large numbers of young people and have engagements in small groups, with a particular emphasis on ensuring sessions don’t add a burden to teachers. • We want to work with academic partners to recreate findings around demographic indicators, explore the impact of preparation and explore the long term impact of political contact. • We want to explore opportunities to develop support for youth political contact in more informal spaces, such as youth clubs. • We want to develop support for schools looking to use political contact for advocacy, to maximise opportunities for student voice.

• We want to continue to support teachers, students and politicians to design and deliver political contact engagements, and support them to maximise their impact.