Executive summary
Introduction
Digital Dialogue: Wales supports young people to have meaningful conversations with the politicians that represent them, building trust and relationships on both sides.
Young people gain the knowledge, skills and confidence to engage in the democratic process through informed interactions with their elected representatives. Digital Dialogue: Wales takes four teaching hours to deliver, with three hours dedicated to workshops and one hour to deliver a Dialogue session. These interactions take place both online and in-person, in classrooms across Wales.
What Digital Dialogue: Wales delivered
This phase of the programme took place between March 2023 and April 2025. There were...
Eight of of the Dialogue sessions were Leader Dialogues, connecting learners with the Senedd Party Leaders.
In this phase of the programme we also delivered three youth hustings in the run up to the General Election.
Impact
Impact on learners
Knowledge
The programme consistently improved learners’ political knowledge. After participating, those who felt they understood the Welsh political system rose by 20%. Primary learners saw the greatest gain, with a 23% rise in understanding the "role of a politician".
Skills
Learners who agreed that they “knew how to question a politician" increased by 16% and those that felt they knew how to research a politician increased by 9%.
Trust and Relationships
The programme had a strong impact on learners’ relationship with, and trust of, politicians, with an increase of 17% in the number of learners who agreed that “There are politicians that represent me and share my views”.
Democratic engagement
Learners also became more politically active, with the number of learners knowing how to vote increasing by 10%, and feeling they can influence change in society increasing by 11%.
Learners: I understand the welsh political system
Impact on teachers
Teachers supporting the learners also benefitted from the programme. Teachers who felt they had the confidence to deliver politically-neutral content to learners rose from 56% to 94%. 100% reported that they felt confident and equipped to deliver the programme, and felt supported by The Politics Project. 100% of teachers would recommend Digital Dialogue: Wales to a colleague.
Teachers: Confidence to deliver politically neutral content
Impact on politicians
The politicians who took part in Digital Dialogue: Wales reported a positive impact. 100% said that the programme gave them a better understanding of young people and their priorities and would recommend taking part in the programme to other politicians.
Wider Impact
Supporting voting
Digital Dialogue: Wales boosted teachers’ confidence in assisting learners with the voter registration process. After taking part, 82% of teachers felt confident in “supporting learners to register to vote”.
Embedding the programme
In this phase of the Digital Dialogue: Wales we saw the programme being embedded into schools; 40% of schools delivered the programme across a whole year group.
Pledges and real-world change
Digital Dialogue: Wales also has had an impact on the wider community. 36 Dialogue sessions have led to a pledge; a commitment by a politician during a Dialogue session to do something on behalf of the learners.
Pledges have included:
Lee Waters MS promised to raise the concerns of learners at Bigyn Primary School over the lack of NHS dentists in Llanelli in the Senedd. Lee visited the school in February 2025 to update the school and meet the new cohort of year 6 learners.
For a full list of pledges
Key Learnings
We have identified the following key learnings from delivering Digital Dialogue: Wales.
Asking questions
Digital Dialogue: Wales has a more profound impact for learners that asked a question during a Dialogue session. Learners were 22% more likely to feel that a “politician cared about their views” if they asked a question and were 27% more likely to say that they found the session interesting.
Mid-size groups
Mid-sized groups (groups of 21 to 40 participants) demonstrated a more consistent positive impact across knowledge, confidence and trust indicators compared to small groups (groups of less than 20) or large groups (groups of 41 or more).
Primary learners
Dialogues are just as impactful for Year 4 to 6 learners compared to Dialogue sessions with older learners. Across many indicators, in particular those around political knowledge and understanding, the programme actually led to a bigger positive change for primary learners. The number of Year 4 to 6 learners who agreed they understand the Welsh political system increased by 25% after taking part in the programme, compared to 14% of Year 7 to 11 learners and 7% of Year 12 to 13 learners.
Multiple engagements
Learners who take part in three or more sessions greatly improve their confidence in sharing their views and talking about issues they care about. Learners who participated in one session saw a 4% point increase in confidence talking about issues they cared about, compared to learners who participated in three or more sessions where it was 16%.
Conclusions and next steps
Digital Dialogue: Wales continues to demonstrate its ability to build trust and relationships between young people and politicians.
It is effective at building knowledge about political systems and in building young people's confidence and skills to engage with politicians and the broader democratic system. We also see the role the programme can play in helping schools to embed democratic education, leading to sustained, long-term engagement.
The programme continues to effectively tackle one of the most complex issues of our time: building political trust. Our learnings around the effect of group size and impact of asking questions suggest though that we will not be able to easily scale our work through increasing the number of learners engaged per session.
Next steps
To grow our impact, here are some of the next steps we would like to take with Digital Dialogue: Wales:
Map democratic education provision
To better understand what democratic education and activities are being delivered in schools and colleges, and to see how Digital Dialogue: Wales fits in with that wider picture, we would track and map political contact in Wales, working with partners to understand where political contact is taking place outside of our programme and work towards more complete national coverage.
Youth hustings
Significant opportunities exist for Senedd Election youth hustings, focused on amplifying youth voice and perspectives. Leveraging the best practice, we have established through delivering youth hustings and our strong relationships with schools, political parties and local authorities, we are well placed to either directly organise these events or provide support to teachers to arrange and deliver their own.
Training politicians in political contact
We would welcome the opportunity to provide training and guidance to politicians around political contact and in particular on supporting pledges, where we see huge opportunities to build relationships and trust.
Supporting the Senedd election
There is a great opportunity to capitalise on the increased interest in politics the Senedd Elections in May 2026 and the Welsh Local Elections in May 2027 will bring to help young people to engage in Welsh democracy. We are keen to continue to support the network of schools we have worked with on this programme to engage with the upcoming elections, and particularly to ensure that 16 -18 year olds can vote and register to vote in the elections.
