Over 40 sixth form students gathered for an interactive workshop with local councillor Nathan Ley to get a hands on look at how local government priorities are set and public funds allocated.

Working in small groups over pizza, the participants took on the “£1 Billion Budget Challenge,” debating. local issues ranging from pothole repairs and local planning to public toilets! The challenge forced teams to move funding between essential services, make difficult financial trade offs, and present their final  proposals to the room.

The event sparked amazing energy and collaborative debate throughout the session, bringing young people together to make new connections while experiencing the complexities of high level budget decisions. Thank you to St Helen and St Katharine for hosting the event.

Student Isaac wrote:

The OX14 partnership thinking supper, held at SHSK provided opportunities for students across multiple schools to come together over pizza and discuss how a town like Abingdon could be improved for its residents. During the event, students were split into several groups from a mixture of schools to provide more varied opinions as they took on the role of a government town council, creating a budget for the year. The event was good fun and provided an interesting challenge, even for students not taking subjects such as politics at A-level. Groups were given a series of rules and restrictions when making their budgets in order to highlight how restricted town council decisions actually are. While every group was given £1bn in funding, only £35m of that was completely unrestricted, though additional funding could be raised over the course of the event. Some groups proposed more dramatic changes than others with one group suggesting they cut state education from ~£350m to £300m in order to completely abolish council tax. Another suggestion was to construct an entire airport in the centre of Abingdon to improve transport options. While some of these policies were more realistic than others, Liberal Democrat councillor Nathan Ley who ran the event said he may take some of our suggestions forward to the actual town council. Overall, the event was a great chance for students to work together and think about some key public issues through a government lens.