Y-Vote Mock Elections is an online community that helps teachers engage young people with issues surrounding democracy and justice, and supports them running a mock election in their schools.

Students can stand as party candidates, speech writers or canvassers, and voice their opinions by taking part in a fun active citizenship exercise, which provides an excellent introduction to the mechanics and issues involved in a real election.

Results are aggregated on a national level and offer interesting insights of what young people think about politics (for example, if it were down to under-18s the UK would have a Liberal Democrat government).

We were commissioned by the Hansard Society to create a website that inspired young people, while enabling teachers to manage their mock elections and Hansard to coordinate the teachers community spread across the four UK nations.

We used many of the ExpressionEngine features (such as moderation tools and multilingual capabilities), and developed an ExpressionEngine plugin that allows site members (teachers) to easily log their mock elections results and the Hansard team to group them by constituency, election type etc. Mock Elections adheres to WC3 guidelines and is AA compliant.

The Y Vote Mock Elections website dovetails with "Big Ben and All That!", a DVD Resource that we created with Hansard Society and the Association for Citizenship Teaching (ACT).

"Big Ben and All That!" enables Teachers to get to grips with the inner workings of Westminster and find out what MPs "actually" do in the course of a week. This free resource gives teachers the inside scoop on what goes on in Westminster through interviews with MPs, Lords, and teachers as well as archived footage from Parliament. It's perfect for bolstering knowledge of the UK Parliament so teachers can approach the teaching of political literacy with real confidence.