Councillor Nathan Ley opened the evening with a talk on the three tiers of local government. Then each table took charge of an imaginary Abingdon Council, with £1 billion to spend and some difficult budget decisions to make. The game was designed by Councillor Ley and Mrs Darcy. Over pizza, students funded some genuinely creative projects and argued their way through some hard cuts. Councillor Ley took their ideas away with him! Read the reflections from students and Councillor Ley below:
“On 29 September I had the interesting opportunity to participate in the first OX14 Thinking Supper. We spent the evening working in groups with people from the other schools in Abingdon to learn first hand what its like to be in local government, by debating how we would use a realistic budget to solve some of the problems we witness every day in our community (over lots of takeaway pizza!). I found the activity very relevant, despite not being specifically linked to any of my A levels, as I felt it was a really valuable opportunity to become more informed about how the decisions are made that affect me and my local area. I was surprised to learn just how much of the council’s budget was pre-allocated before they could make any decisions about how to spend it in the best interests of the town (and of course how complicated it was to decide what was going to be in the best interests of the most people). Navigating these conflicts of interest and balancing gaining income and losing popularity was certainly an interesting exercise and will definitely give me more sympathy towards the council in the future, having experienced for myself the complexity of improving the town to please everyone, with minimal resources. We presented our ideas to the group at the end, which were judged by Councillor Nathan Ley, and my group’s victory based on our idea to rejuvenate the Abingdon shopping precinct was a great end to an enjoyable evening.”
Lucy (L6)
“The recent thinking supper was a fantastic opportunity to collaborate with our peers from other local schools. Firstly we listened to a talk from councillor Nathan Ley, which was extremely informative. We were then given the task of becoming the Oxfordshire county council and creating a budget based on our priorities within the local community. The pizza was also definitely a highlight of the evening! Overall it was a lovely event and left us with valuable knowledge about the running of the council.”
Mercy (L6)
Councillor Nathan Ley said: “One evening last month a number of students from different schools in Abingdon came together and spent two hours taking apart my hypothetical council budget. We set up a game. They worked in mixed groups, mostly with people they had never met. Every group presented at the end. I have sat through a great many budget discussions. This was a better use of my time than most of them.
“The event was a ‘Thinking Supper’ run by the OX14 Learning Partnership, which is a brilliant initiative bringing together Abingdon’s six schools: Abingdon School, Fitzharrys, John Mason, Larkmead, Radley College and St Helen and St Katharine.
“People keep saying young people are disengaged from politics. I have now watched lots of them volunteer an evening with a strange local Councillor, eat pizza over a spreadsheet, and argue about adult social care funding until they had to be stopped. They are not disengaged. They have mostly just never been asked. And they are our future. We are in good hands.”
Read Councillor Ley’s full reflections on Substack: What I learned handing the council budget to a room of teenagers.
