Pledges
Pledges
When a politician offers to do something on behalf of the learners during a Dialogue we log it as a “Pledge”. We will then liaise with the politician and school to support the politician in fulfilling the pledge.
36 Dialogue sessions have had a pledge from a politician. At the time of writing, 13 pledges have been completed, 15 are in progress and 8 have not been completed.
Impact of pledges
The positive change
Learners who took part in a session that included a pledge showed a bigger positive change on a range of indicators including: oracy and research skills, confidence to engage in politics, trust in the system and relationships with politicians, and democratic participation.
Learners who took part in Dialogues with pledges also started at a higher baseline for the above indicators compared to the baselines for learners who took part in sessions without pledges. This suggests that the pledges are more likely to happen when learners have a certain level of trust, skills and confidence already. As we show below, the degree of positive change for learners with pledges is higher even accounting for their higher baseline start, so we can see that politicians making pledges in themselves still lead to better outcomes for learners.
Learners feel more confident
Pledges are associated with an increase in learners' confidence to take part in conversations with politicians and research politicians. There was a 23% increase in said learners' confidence “questioning a politician” compared to 15% for learners without a pledge. This may be because pledges make the learners feel more positive about their Dialogue sessions and their ability to question politicians. This also suggests that learners who received pledges were more likely to have taken part in sessions where the “prepare” resources were delivered well, as those resources include specific activities that are designed to help learners engage with politicians, conduct research and prepare their questions.
Pledges build relationships
When politicians make a pledge on behalf of young people, it helps young people feel more positive about their representatives. Young people who received a pledge from a politician were 27% more likely to believe that "politicians represent me and share my views", following participation, compared to 12% of those who did not receive a pledge. Furthermore, pledges are strongly positively associated with young peoples’ trust in politicians and the likelihood that young people feel that politicians “care what they think”. This may also be because politicians that offer pledges are more engaged with their young constituents and are more effective at building strong relationships.
While we can observe the immediate impact of a politician's promise to learners, we lack concrete data on the long-term effects of completed or uncompleted pledges. This is due to the timing of the post-programme evaluations, which are administered directly after the final Dialogue, while pledge completion often occurs later.
Pledges lead to democratic engagement
Pledges are also positively associated with young people’s confidence to engage with politics. Young people who took part in a session with a pledge who reported that they “can influence change in society”, increased from 34% before the programme to 66% after, an increase of 33 percentage points. For learners in sessions without pledges, there was an increase of 9 percentage points. As is shown in the graph below, this then also leads to a huge disparity in the likelihood to engage in the democratic process.
% change in learner views on politicians (with and without pledges)
% change in likelihood of learners to participate in democracy, (with and without pledges)
Proving the impact of pledges
Pledges are not easy to predict or engineer and are only possible if both the learners and politicians are sufficiently willing to engage with each other. It is hard to say if they are a just another outcome of a good session, that high quality preparation and session leads to both a pledge and the positive outcomes above, or if pledges themselves lead to more positive outcomes.
One piece of evidence that suggests that the pledges themselves lead to positive outcomes, is that indicators around knowledge and understanding change show similar positive changes, whether the learners have taken part in a session with a pledge or not.
A list of the completed pledged can be found here
The impact of not completing pledges
Pledges that aren’t fulfilled by politicians can have a negative impact on learners. Although this isn’t possible to see from learner feedback, which is completed directly after the sessions take place, we have received anecdotal evidence from teachers that it has a negative impact on their learners.
As well as affecting learners, this also demotivates teachers to facilitate political contact, as they want to prevent their learners from having negative experiences and they feel let down by politicians they have engaged with.
Tracking pledges
Given the role that pledges seem to play on the impactfulness of sessions, it is important for anyone taking part in political contact to have a process to both note pledges and to feedback on their outcome.
Once we have completed a session it is hard for us to compel politicians to share updates on their pledges, and from this programme we still have 8 of pledges that are incomplete and 15 in progress.
As a next step, we would welcome the opportunity to share our learning around pledges more widely with politicians and support their teams to feedback on pledges effectively to all constituents.
The only area where making a pledge doesn’t appear to make a difference is in relation to political knowledge and understanding, as all learners demonstrated similar positive change regardless of receiving a pledge.
Even ‘I gave it a go however there’s no money’ - just something to make the children feel that they said their piece and that they were listened to, and okay nothing was able to be done but at least someone’s taken it somewhere.”
This could be because pledging itself doesn’t necessarily impart new information, as politicians are solely making promises. Completed pledges, however, might have an impact on knowledge and understanding. For example, a pledge inviting learners to tour the Senedd would most likely enhance understanding. Due to the timing of our evaluations, however, we cannot assess this longer-term effect.
Case study: Nick Thomas-Symonds MP writes to Local Education Authority over size of school meals at New Inn Primary School.
In March 2024, three year 6 classes at New Inn Primary School participated in a Digital Dialogue with Nick Thomas-Symonds, Labour MP for Torfaen.
During their conversation, a learner asked Nick if he could address the issue of small school meal portions. Nick promised to contact the Local Education Authority (LEA) on their behalf.
Within 3 weeks, the LEA had responded and this response had been shared with the school. They confirmed that their primary school meals currently “meet the food and nutritional standards under the Healthy Eating in…Schools Regulations 2013”. They did however acknowledge that this guidance is due for revision and confirmed that they are participating in the current WLGA consultation process to address this upcoming revision.
The LEA explained that prior to Nick’s email they were not aware of any concerns from staff, learners or parents at New Inn Primary. Their subsequent investigation identified this as a “particular issue with Year 6 learners”
It was agreed that, going forward, the LEA would “consult directly with pupils on a regular basis” to monitor levels of satisfaction with school meal portions. It was also agreed that the current salad bar would be replaced with a pasta bar to offer a more substantial meal option.
The school “welcomed” these proposals and expressed sincere appreciation to Nick for upholding his promise. Whilst reflecting on his participation in the programme, Nick highlights that ‘the Digital Dialogue: Wales programme has been invaluable in hearing [young people’s] concerns and picking up issues on their behalf’.
