Political Compass - starter activity for new Politics students

Here's an updated version of the popular activity 'Political Compass' which teachers have used as part of their induction classes with new Politics students in previous years.

Most students will be comfortable with the concept of a left and right spectrum in politics and would be able to identify where most of the major political parties in the UK might sit. The 'Political Compass' takes the concept further by adding in a new axis which uses the 'authoritarian' vs 'libertarian' aspect of policy implmentation. Students are given a list of 10 parties and asked to place these on the grid to reflect their policies. Note: the position of the answers to this activity are based upon the party policies of the 2017 General Election and further information on how those positions were generated can be found here. As such, the activity does not include the Brexit Party - although where the Brexit Party sit on the grid would be an interesting follow up question (as would whether the position of the Conservative Party may have shifted since 2017!).

Having completed the tasks, students give their answers to their teacher who will then use the Powerpoint file below to calculate a score based upon the students' answers compared to the 'correct' answer. The maxmum score is 100.

Download the 'Political Compass v2019' activity here.

The Powerpoint file contains 'macros' (to make calculations) which need to be 'enabled' as the file is opened.