Lesson video

Hi, are you alright? My name is Mrs. Tomassi and I'm gonna be working through a review on your Citizenship lesson today, and hopefully, you've got everything you need for your lesson, you're all ready to go, and then we will now make a start.

So the title of today's lesson is, "What are referendums and why are they used?" This forms part of the unit on "How well has the UK adjusted to its changing relationship with the EU?" Hopefully, by the end of this session you'll be able to explain what a referendum is and how they can be used in a democracy.

Now, in today's lesson there are three keywords, and remember, you'll see these in bold throughout and you can always refer back to them here.

So the first one is referendum.

Now, a referendum is a general vote by the electorate on a single political issue which has been referred to them for a direct decision.

It's a form of direct democracy.

The next keyword is representative democracy.

This is a type of democracy where citizens choose others to represent them, making important decisions on their behalf.

And the final keyword is direct democracy, and that is where the people decide on the policy directly, for example, through a vote or referendum on each issue.

So you will see these throughout.

Now, referendum and direct democracy do link, so remember you can come back to here to make sure that you've got the difference between the two.

If you're all good, we will make a start with the first learning cycle, which is, "How do representative and direct democracy differ?" Now, when we're talking about democracy, we're talking about a system of government where power is rooted in the people.

So it comes from the Greek words demo and kratos, which mean power to the people, and this goes all the way back to ancient Greece.

One part of democracy is all about free and fair elections, this idea that the people get to cast their votes and they get to pick somebody to represent them, or they get to be involved in the decision-making process.

Just to show you how that works, we've got Izzy and Jacob here.

Now both of them are standing for their school council, so they want to be elected so that they can make decisions about what's going on in the school.

So, to start with, they delivered a speech to their classmates and the votes were casted.

Now Izzy received 20 votes and Jacob received 11 votes, so this meant that Izzy got elected because she got the most votes.

Now, that's one form of democracy.

Democracy does come in different forms, but we are gonna focus on two main ones today, which is representative and direct democracy.

So representative, start to think about that word because you probably heard of the word represent before.

Now, if you have, what does that word mean? If you think.

If I said to you, "Oh yeah, they represented me," that might help you to remember that representative democracy is about electing somebody to represent you on your behalf and your views.

To give you a bit of an example, like in the UK where we have members of Parliament who represent on our behalf.

So going back to the case of Izzy and Jacob.

Now, during their election campaign, they had different priorities.

So Izzy wanted better food in the canteen and the school library to open longer after school, whereas Jacob wanted more music lessons and more school trips.

What this meant is that now Izzy has become elected, we assume that more people agree with her views about the school lunches in the library, so then what would happen is Izzy would go to the school council and she would vote on them other issues, but those main things that were in her policies and her campaign at the start, you would expect students to think that she's gonna deliver and that's what she's gonna achieve, because that's what she set out and this is why they voted for her.

So just to check now that you understand what representative democracy is.

In a representative democracy, what do people vote for? A, directly for people they want to represent them; B, directly on issues they care about or C, directly on all issues the government faces.

It is A, so they're there to vote on behalf of their representatives.

Still talking about the example of Izzy here, she's elected to represent her class.

It doesn't mean that she's now going to, on every decision she makes, she's gonna ask them for their views every time, because that would take a very long time and that defeats the point of being a representative democracy.

So instead she votes what she thinks her class would want based on what she's seen going on, et cetera.

So here, the school council is voting on allowing Year 10 and 11 students to use the library after school for an extra 30 minutes.

Izzy is gonna vote in favour for that because that was, if you think back to her campaign, that was one of her ideas and this is what the message that she's trying to get across, so she thinks this is why people voted for her.

So, as we said earlier, it's also an example in the UK we elect members of Parliament and also in local elections you elect local councillors, and they represent their constituents, the people in the area, the views on their behalf.

So the local counsellors represent the ward or local area.

This might be issues like council tax or libraries, roads.

The MPs will talk the national centralised powers and issues.

And so they might vote on things such as the income tax or money is spent on the NHS.

Hopefully, you're starting to have a good idea now of this what a representative democracy is.

One thing that we did mention as well when we looked at the case of Izzy and Jacob is they had these ideas for their campaign.

This is what a manifesto is.

So it's the promises, the ideas that once you're elected this is what you want to achieve.

Can you remember what Izzy wanted to achieve? So thinking about the library and the canteen, these would be ideas that would go in a manifesto.

So, once they are elected, we have very little control over how the representatives vote.

Now in the case of Izzy, she could have turned around and gone, actually, "I'm not gonna vote like that." But the likelihood is if you voted for somebody and now they're going against what they're doing, you're probably not gonna vote 'them in again.

So, you tend to hope that actually representatives do want to represent their constituencies, the people around them and they will tend to vote in favour for those in their area.

So, true or false: in a representative democracy, we can tell an MP how to vote? Did you remember that, that's false.

Why is that false? We elect representatives.

Once they're elected, we cannot control how they vote.

Instead, we trust that they will keep their election promises and if not, we might change our mind at the next election and vote for someone else.

We've had a look now at representative democracy.

We are now going to look at the other kind which is direct democracy.

And again, if we are thinking of the word here to help, remember direct, someone directly addresses you or they directly talk to you.

It's this idea that there's no middle man, you are going straight to the person.

This is the same with direct democracy.

Because people get to vote directly on laws and issues without a representative.

This can be challenging in the modern world where many issues may require numerous votes.

So if we have numerous votes and we need everyone to vote on it, even actually if you look back at Izzy and Jacob and their school, that would be time consuming.

Now imagine doing that on a scale of the whole country.

It could be very time consuming.

If we think what would happen in a direct democracy, actually Izzy and Jacob wouldn't have even stood for election because it wouldn't be necessary, you don't need a school council.

Instead, pupils would bring up issues and all the pupils would vote on them directly.

So here, Izzy might demand a 100% online homework policy and everyone would have to vote yes or no.

Can you think what challenges this might cause? Kind of mentioned (indistinct) to mention it a little bit a minute ago.

So if you're thinking actually, well what if everyone's not in? How are you gonna get everyone to vote on time? The challenge is organising it all.

Did you manage to think of some of them? If you did, you're along the right lines but actually sometimes this is very necessary.

And you might see this in what is called a referendum.

Now, referendum is a type of direct democracy and we're gonna look at this throughout the lesson.

So, these are special types of votes on very important issues and the government asks people directly about them.

Just before we move on, we're gonna do a check for understanding.

So can you change two words to make Izzy correct? In the UK, we sometimes have a type of representative democracy called a referendum.

These are special votes where the government asks people about small issues.

So you need to change two words.

If you need to, you can pause.

If not, see how you get on.

Did you manage to work out that it would be direct democracy, not representative and it is big issues, not small issues? This moves us onto our first task for today.

So, can you correct these definitions about democracy? So you've got their representative democracy is when the government chooses people to make decisions for the citizens and you've got direct democracy is when the people elect a president to make decisions on their behalf.

Take some time, pause and see if you can get the correct definitions.

How did you find that? Hopefully, you managed to remember that a representative democracy is where people vote for others to make decisions for them like voting on important laws or policies.

And direct democracy is when people vote on things directly, like for a referendum or vote on issues.

Now we're gonna have a look at the second part of the task.

So now, we know the definitions of them both.

Can you read the examples and decide if they are direct or representative democracy? I'll read them out and then if you need to, you can pause and then unpause when you're ready to feedback.

So, MPs are elected and vote on national laws and policies.

Citizens vote on a proposed change to the driving laws in a national referendum.

People in a town vote on whether to build a new youth centre and citizens elect local councillors who make policies for their local area on things such as roads and schools.

How did you get on? Hopefully, you managed to work out the MPs because they are elected, that's representative.

So remember, they've got someone representing them.

Direct, there's no, it's going straight to the people.

So that was the driving laws in national referendum.

And then again, we've gone straight to the people for a town vote so that's direct democracy.

And the final one, local councillors have been elected to make decisions.

So again, they are representing.

And that is the main way I think to help you remember the difference.

You've got someone representing or if it's direct, the people, the citizens get the say straight away.

And with that we're gonna move on to the second learning cycle, which is specifically looking at how the referendums work and why are they important.

Now, do you remember what a referendum is because we mentioned it in the first learning cycle? Giving the citizen the chance to directly influence government decisions.

It are simple, important questions that require a yes or no answer.

If you think about why, so if you're thinking about actually if they asked for people's opinions and we are looking at millions of people being able to vote, then it's not gonna help to get a conclusion.

So it has to be something that has a yes or no answer and then that can be concluded and scored to see which people would prefer.

Now these questions could be about national, regional, so different areas or local issues.

Parliament does not have to follow the decision made, but it's very difficult for them to ignore it.

So actually, if they put a vote out to the people and they say, "Ah, actually we're gonna do something complete different", people are probably gonna be like, "Hmm, well why did we get to vote then?" So although they don't have to, they tend to go with what the people are saying.

Now in the UK, although we're talking about referendums, if you remember, which type of democracy does the UK have? It is a representative democracy.

So, referendums are very rare.

There's only ever been three national referendums. And this is because parliament is the sovereign decision making body in the UK.

So it is parliament that usually decide.

The three times it has happened.

It first was in 1975 and that's the UK's membership of then the European Economic Community whether the UK should join and they did.

Then in 2011 the proposed change to the UK's parliamentary voting system and 2016, the UK's membership of the European Union.

And you might have heard of that one in terms of, and maybe you've heard of it being called Brexit as well.

So this was the referendum here.

Now, individual countries in the UK have had a total of 10 referendums. So when we say the three national, that's for the UK as a whole.

England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have had 10 of their own referendums. And we will look at one in a little bit more detail in a minute.

Before we get there, we're gonna do a check for understanding.

So why has the UK had so few national referendums? Is it A, the government are not interested in citizens' views; B, Parliament is a sovereign decision maker for the UK; C, referendums cause conflict to their best avoided? It was B.

So the parliament is the sovereign decision maker.

We have a representative democracy.

So it is rare to see referendums. Now, we did mention more of the regional referendums. Now what they tend to be to do with is so called devolution.

So, devolution is more powers have been transferred to the regional areas.

So they might want to have more decisions on issues.

Sovereignty, so self-governance and the idea of being able to self govern.

And then independence, this idea of just being completely independent and being their own country.

Now to give you an example, in 2014, Scotland held an independence referendum.

Now the government asked the people of Scotland, should Scotland be an independent country? Only citizens of Scotland were allowed to vote in this referendum because obviously it would impact them.

In this referendum, 84.

6% of the people in the electorate voted and 55.

3% voted no and 44.

7% voted yes.

So it's quite tight.

But what it meant was that Scotland remained part of the United Kingdom because you say the majority voted no.

And as I said earlier, the one that you might have heard of and you might hear the word Brexit, is what is the most recent referendum in the UK and that happened in 2016.

That's when UK citizens were asked to vote, should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union.

And the results were, to remain was 48.

1% and leave was 51.

9%.

So if you thought the Scottish referendum was tight, actually the European Union referendum was even tighter.

Now because of this, the majority voted leave.

That's what then decision was made.

So, in the UK, national referendums have mostly been about A, voting systems in the UK; B, education in the UK or C, the UK's relationship with Europe? It is the UK's relationship with Europe.

Because if you remember, there's only been three national referendums and two of them, one was about entering the EEC and one was about leaving the European Union, the other was about voting systems. Now, referendums are important because they allow citizens to express their views directly to the government.

They're examples of direct democracy.

And this is what we spoke about earlier.

Now this means both sides of the arguments need to work directly with the people to convince them they're right.

Campaigns are often high profile.

Especially if we are talking nationally, people want to get the ideas across to others to get people involved.

So Sophia says, "Asking a yes or no question allows more citizens to engage with the debate." Referendums are not usually divided by political parties.

So it means people can vote freely regardless of what political party they support or are in favour of.

Now this doesn't mean the outcome is not sometimes controversial or difficult for the government to deal with.

Referendums are usually asked as A, yes or no; B, agree or disagree; C, labour or conservative? It is yes or no.

And that moves us on to the final task for today's lesson.

So, can you describe the differences between national and regional referendums? If you remember national being the ones that impact the whole of the UK and regional might be specific countries so like England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland.

In your response include the following examples: so the 2016 referendum on EU membership, which is the national one and the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence, which is the regional one.

Take some time to come up with your response so you can pause now and then unpause when you are ready to go through the feedback.

How did you get on? Did you manage to work out the different ones and some differences between them? Now you could have included national referendums tend to ask questions about issues that affect the UK as a whole nation.

For example, in 2016, UK citizens were asked if they wanted the UK to continue being member of the EU.

51.

9% of people voted no so the UK left the EU.

Regional referendums tend to ask questions about a country's sovereignty or how much power it has, devolution.

In 2014, Scotland asked its citizens if they wanted to be independent of the UK.

The majority of people, 55.

3% voted no.

So they remained in the UK.

How did you get on with that? If you managed to link the two examples, brilliant job.

Because it can be tricky to remember the differences between national and regional areas.

So great job if you did.

And then that brings us to a close on today's session.

So we are just gonna summarise quickly.

Now, democracy is a system of government where power is rooted in the people.

It's one of the oldest forms of government.

Representative democracy is the most common form.

It involves people electing a representative who votes and make laws on their behalf.

Direct democracy is where the citizens can vote directly on issues.

In the UK, we occasionally use direct democracy in the UK through referendums. Referendums are votes, usually yes or no on specific issues.

The most recent referendum resulted in the UK leaving the European Union.

And that was an example of a national referendum.

And then you've also remember, you've got the regional referendums as well.

Thank you for working through on this lesson with me today.

Hopefully, you can remember that representative, you think you'd have somebody in the middle, somebody there to represent and direct democracy, whether citizens are directly involved through things such as referendums. And thanks for working with me and enjoy the rest of your day.