Our focus group study of 12 and 13-year-olds who will be voters in 2029 reveals they’re forming views without the structure or understanding schools should provide, says Katie Carr.
By 2029, around 1.7 million 16 and 17-year-olds will be eligible to vote for the first time – a new electorate the size of several cities. The decision to lower the voting age has sparked familiar arguments about whether young people will be ready.
But after spending time with the 12 and 13-year-olds who will become the first 16-year-old voters, I am increasingly convinced we are worrying about the wrong thing.
The real issue is not whether these pupils will be ready at 16, it is that their political identities are forming already, long before most schools consider civic understanding a priority.
This week, Public First is publishing new research with these pupils – one of the earliest attempts to understand how the first 16-year-old voters are already making sense of politics, and what that means for the schools that teach them.
We spoke with 40 year 8 pupils in four focus groups in two very different parts of the country: County Durham and Bristol.
Striking and profound
What emerged was both striking and quietly profound. These pupils are not apathetic, they are not disengaged, they are not waiting to “become political” at some later stage.
They are already absorbing, filtering and interpreting the world around them – but through the lens of place, family and lived experience rather than through any formal civic education.
In County Durham, immigration dominated the conversation – not in simplistic or hostile terms, but in emotionally complex ways that reflected local anxieties, family narratives and the political symbols they encounter daily.
In Bristol, pupils were more preoccupied with crime, NHS funding and the pressure on public services.
These are two groups of children of similar socio-economic status, living in the same country, asking the same questions – yet already inhabiting entirely different political worlds.
Schools do not create these worlds, but they are one of the few institutions that reach across them.
One of the most revealing aspects of the research was pupils’ sense of confidence – or lack of it.
In Bristol, young people talked fluently about ways to influence government: petitions, letters, protests. They knew how voices can gather power.
In County Durham, pupils struggled to imagine any route into political participation at all. The idea felt distant, abstract, reserved for adults with authority.
Emerging inequalities
These are not trivial differences. They signal emerging inequalities in civic confidence that will shape whether young people feel that democracy is something they can take part in or something that happens to them.
At the same time, pupils demonstrated a surprisingly sophisticated awareness of misinformation.
They cross-check, they distrust what feels too dramatic, and they instinctively reach for sources they feel are accountable. Their instincts are sound.
What is missing is not scepticism, but structure. They are navigating political content without the conceptual tools that schools are uniquely well placed to provide.
These pupils are forming political identities through instinct, conversation and observation – in the absence of structured knowledge about how politics works.
This is when schools matter most
They recognise Nigel Farage but cannot name the prime minister. They can decode the politics of a flag but struggle to explain the role of Parliament.
They can sense bias but are unsure how to analyse competing political claims. Their understanding is shaped, but unevenly. Alive in practice, but unanchored in knowledge.
This is the moment when schools matter most.
Not to tell pupils what to think – but to help them understand how political systems function, how information is constructed, and how to evaluate the competing stories they hear at home, online and in their communities. If schools do not step into that space, others will.
If we want those future 16-year-old voters to enter the electorate with confidence rather than confusion, and understanding rather than instinct alone, we need to start earlier.
Schools cannot erase the differences between Bristol and County Durham, and nor should they.
But they can provide something that no other institution is in a position to offer: a shared foundation of civic understanding that gives every young person, wherever they grow up, the knowledge and tools to participate meaningfully in our democracy.
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