EC teams up with Education Ministry to impart electoral literacy from Class 6

The initiative - Classroom to Polling Stations – is intended to catch the school students young, instil democratic values and ethos in them at the formative age, and and prepare them for their first vote on attaining voting rights at the age of 18.

New Delhi: Each senior secondary school will have a ‘democracy room’ while the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) will include content on electoral literacy in textbooks, starting from the ones for the students of Class 6 itself.

 The Election Commission (EC) on Thursday inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Ministry of Education to bring electoral literacy to classrooms across the country, integrating voter education and electoral literacy into the curricular framework, starting from Class 6 in all schools. The initiative - Classroom to Polling Stations – is intended to catch the school students young, instill democratic values and ethos in them at the formative age, and and prepare them for their first vote on attaining voting rights at the age of 18.  

The MoU inked on Thursday underscores the development of an institutional framework that seeks to incorporate electoral literacy formally into the school and college education system, through structured curricular, co-curricular, and extracurricular activities – all intended to help prepare future and new voters for greater electoral participation and in effect strengthening democracy, according to the EC.

 It’s crucial to capture the attention of young minds and educate them about the significance and value of their vote in every election, the commission noted.

 The MoU provides for systematically integrating voter education and electoral literacy into the curriculum, starting from Class 6 in all schools and extending to the curricular framework for all colleges and universities, tailored to suit different disciplines. The NCERT would update textbooks to include content on electoral literacy and would advise the state education boards and other boards to follow suit.

The EC’s MoU with the Ministry of Education emphasised the orientation and training of teachers in effectively imparting electoral literacy in classrooms and provided for establishing Electoral Literacy Clubs (ELCs) in schools and colleges. It seeks to evolve a robust mechanism to fulfil the aspirational goal of the commission to hand over the voter ID card to every student immediately after she or he attains the age of 18 years. The EC will create an institutional framework for online registration of eligible and prospective students who have attained 17+ years of age (after every qualifying date like January 1, April 1, July 1 and October 1 of every calendar year) and during the annual summary revision of electoral rolls). 

 The EC stated that its MoU with the Ministry of Education would include electoral literacy in the curriculum for adult literacy and basic education, creating educational content focused on electoral processes for lifelong learning.

 The schools will be asked to designate one of the rooms in every senior secondary school as the 'Democracy Room' for the regular display of voter education materials and the conduct of Continuous Electoral and Democracy Education (CEDE) activities throughout the year.

 The MoU also aims to address the issues like apathy among urban and young voters, as a crucial aspect of continuous electoral and democracy education. This integration seeks to motivate future voters to participate more actively in elections, fostering responsible citizenship, and reinforcing our democratic system with informed and dutiful citizens, the EC stated.