All Year 10 Shirley Boys’ students have just completed a mock election in their Social Studies classes. This election was mainly to learn about how New Zealand’s MMP system works and comes at the end of a unit where all Year 10s learn about the history of democracy, our parliament history and systems or Civics for 5-6 weeks. Closer to October 14, the students will also participate in the New Zealand Electoral Commission’s Kids Voting - Te Pōti a Ngā Tamariki election, which closely mirrors New Zealand’s general election. Here students can choose their electoral roll (Māori or General) and electorate (most will be Christchurch East) and then get a ballot paper which is similar to the ones their parents will get.

In the mock MMP SBHS election, the students got to choose who they thought would best represent their class (electorate) in the SBHS parliament but also to vote for the Party who had the best idea to improve the running of the school. the ‘Earth’ Party, took 33% of the vote, with the main policy of making lunchtime 20mins in length – from 50mins currently. But like a ‘usual’ MMP election, the Earth Party would have needed to form a coalition with the Fire Party to form the SBHS ‘Government’. The Fire Party’s key policy was to start school at 9.00am - a ½ hour later than the current start time.

The 10K class winning candidate William Sandford (from the ‘Fire’ Party) was a clear winner with 38% of the vote (his 

The representatives of the Earth and Water party congratulate each on gaining the greatest % of votes in the more important party vote.

This photo shows a number of students also got a surprise visit from the Christchurch East Labour candidate, Rueben Davidson, and current MP, Tamati Coffey. Who were brought in by a recent SBHS old boy and prefect, and now a local Labour Party election organiser, Alex Hexison. Tamati Coffey talked to the boys about what it was like to be an MP and answered a number of interesting questions from the class.