Information for Young People

In this research, we are working with schools around the country to understand how young people feel about social issues, and how they express their thoughts, feelings, and values on these issues inside and outside school. We’re focusing particularly on issues of race and faith equality in this study. We know that there are other important issues, like gender equality, the cost of living, and climate change. These will come up during the research too of course.

For the national survey of Year 10 pupils, we randomly choose certain schools to take part because they represent the kinds of schools in particular parts of England, e.g. city, town and rural schools, academy, local authority maintained and voluntary aided schools, and so on. The survey asks questions about what young people think is good/bad for democracy, where they learn about social/political issues, how their school deals with diversity issues, and how they respond to strong disagreement or offense. We ask everyone taking part to identify their gender, ethnicity, religion/beliefs and socio-economic background so that we can track patterns in the responses of pupils from different backgrounds. But on all question, you can either skip giving an answer or tick ‘prefer not to say’.

For the interviews and school observations part of the research, we choose a much smaller number of schools to take part because we thought the mix of pupils, the location and the type of school (e.g. academy) was of interest to really understanding what is going in everyday life in these schools.

Because Year 10 pupils tend to be under 16 years old, we must ask their parent/guardian for permission to include them in the study. Of course, we will always make sure that young people are comfortable to take part. For the survey, participation in the study will be anonymous. This means we won’t be able to tell who gave us what answers. For the interviews and observations, we will of course know who took part. But we won’t share the name of the young person, their school or teachers with anyone.

Information on the findings from the study will be shared on this website and with your school over the course of the project, which runs until February 2025. Please check back regularly for more information!