The Young Essex Assembly is an elected county wide youth council, with members representing regions across the county.

We are delighted that five students from the school have been elected to this group of 75 students (which includes 8 in total for our area), and would like to congratulate them on their achievements. Laura Hartwell, Emily Adcock, Katy Finch, John Quinton and Jamie Davy were all elected to the assembly and so far have participated in a number of activities including a residential, which will prepare them for their two years working on the assembly to improve the lives of young people in Essex. Jamie Davy has additionally been elected to the UK Youth Parliament, which will involve campaigning for change for young people nationally as well as visits to the Houses of Parliament. All students at the school had the opportunity to vote for representatives on the YEA, but candidates were anonymised so that they did not know the names of who they were voting for, and had to look at their statements and ideas instead.

Well done to these students for their fabulous success with this and thanks to them for their work to improve the lives of young people.

Mrs M Townsend
Assistant Headteacher, Notley High School and Braintree Sixth Form

Young Essex Assembly Representatives

The Young Essex Assembly is an elected county wide youth council, with members representing regions across the county. We are delighted that five students from the school have been elected to this group of 75 students (which includes 8 in total for our area), and would like to congratulate them on their achievements. Laura Hartwell, Emily Adcock, Katy Finch, John Quinton and Jamie Davy were all elected to the assembly and so far have participated in a number of activities including a residential, which will prepare them for their two years working on the assembly to improve the lives of young people in Essex. Jamie Davy has additionally been elected to the UK Youth Parliament, which will involve campaigning for change for young people nationally as well as visits to the Houses of Parliament. All students at the school had the opportunity to vote for representatives on the YEA, but candidates were anonymised so that they did not know the names of who they were voting for, and had to look at their statements and ideas instead. Well done to these students for their fabulous success with this and thanks to them for their work to improve the lives of young people.I'm Emily, and last year I was elected into the YEA. Maybe you don't know what the YEA is? It's a group of around 80 11-18 year olds, spread out across Essex, trying to change the small things that make a big impact on Young People's lives. And if you were wondering, YEA stands for Young Essex Assembly. We are elected onto this council for 2 years. We were elected by YOU, the Young People of Essex in December. So far we have been on a residential, held a debate in Chelmsford Council Chamber and attended several meetings. I have already made loads of new friends and the YEA will new doors and opportunities for us all.

Emily Adcock

As part of the YEA, our role is to represent young people across Essex. We were elected onto the YEA last December, and since then there have already been so many activities, such as a residential in February to Kingswood activity centre in Norfolk. Whilst there, we took part in debate training, presentation skills, and many more. We also did team building activities, for example 'team challenge', where we had to work together to complete tasks such as getting everyone over a wall. The main reason for the residential was to get to know the other 75 members of the YEA, and to learn how to get the young people of Essex's voices heard. This year our main project is on the topic of 'wellbeing' as this was voted for by young people in Essex. I am looking forward to working with the rest of the YEA on projects over the next two years.

Katy Finch

I have just joined the YEA and so far I have had so many amazing opportunities. I've already been to the house of commons and spoke to my local MPs about issues in Essex, Council Chambers where we did a mental  health workshop. We've been to Kingswood In West Runton where we took part in lots of different team building activities and did a debate on lots of different subjects including ‘can terrorism be justified?’ and ‘do we need homework?’. This gave us skills that we need for the future the way. YEA has also opened many doors for me from the way I have gained lots of new experiences and made loads of new friends. I hope to be on the YEA for another two more terms and make a difference to Essex.

Laura Hartwell

I’m Jamie and I’m part of the Young Essex Assembly and United Kingdom Youth Parliament. The YEA is a group of about eighty across Essex that meet monthly and the UKYP are a team of six that mean twice a year. It lasts for roughly two years and is split into four sections: West, South, North and Mid. It started back in October ans over those next few months the application process was made up of a workshop, trial session and finally the voting. In these we debated about current topics such as: wellbeing, voting, transport and rights. Once getting in, we worked out our UKYP members and decided on our current topics. For the YEA it’s mental health as an umbrella theme and for the UKYP it’s curriculum for life and votes for sixteen year olds. The terms last for two years on the YEA and a year on the UKYP. We also were able meet the others on the YEA and do general ice breaking before we got started on our topics as we attended a residential. This trip lasted for four days, in which we were split into four groups. These groups rotated around the activities, which included: caving, Jacobs’ ladder, go karting, Quasar, murder mystery and many more. We also stopped to participate in a fun debate in which we were given a statement and whether we agreed or disagreed. We then had an hour to come up with five points, an opening and closing statement, which had to last for ten minutes - I might add that my team and I won ours. It was an enjoyable experience, which we all shared! I hope that I can use both my YEA place as well as my UKYP place to make small changes to teens’ lives that will big impacts or get closer to what they all want. Overall I hope I can be helpful to younger teens by taking suggestions and questions from them on what they want to see implemented as well as appealing as a friend figure and helping hand.

Jamie Davy