Welcome to the Passport to Democracy Program!

My name is Sarah and I’m the Schools Engagement Coordinator at the Victorian Electoral Commission.

I wanted to let you know about our free program, including web-based and hard copy resources, and incursions (face to face or online depending on the COVID-19 situation) that we have available to all Victorian schools, teachers and students. Our schools team consists of qualified teachers who are registered by the VIT to teach in Victoria.

Free Resources:

Passport to Democracy (PTD) is an active citizenship resource which aims to develop critical thinking skills in students by prompting them to consider how they can make an impact on issues they care about and, ultimately, how they can engage with the community to achieve positive change. All our resources are aligned to the Victorian Civics and Citizenship curriculum levels 3-10 and the Capabilities too! Additionally we have a VCAL ‘Partner Up’ program which covers all outcomes in PDS, Unit 2, and five outcomes in Literacy Skills. 

The full PTD program consists of four modules – Decide, Research, Activate, and Vote.

We understand, though, that our full 16 lesson program does not suit every context or time frame. Our resources are totally adaptable, and we’re happy to advise you how to create your own unit as well as suggesting other resources you might use to make your civics curriculum engaging and relevant for your students. Additionally, we have a ‘Mini Passport’ sequence of 8 lessons available that can be a good place to start looking for inspiration if you want to pick and choose elements of the program to integrate into your already packed humanities curriculum!

Visit https://passport.vec.vic.gov.au/teachers for more.

Free Incursions:

We would love to run a free incursion with your students! Generally, our base presentation* covers:

• What is a democracy?
• the three levels of government
• who is eligible to vote?
• how to enrol to vote
• preferential voting along with a mock election (complete with voting screens and a ballot box provided at no charge!).

*This presentation can be varied to suit any year level, the particular context of students’ studies and any specific topic related to the above that you might like us to focus on.

Additionally, for VCE & VCAL students, we offer sessions focussing on electoral elements as ‘life skills’, where we can step through the enrolment process and how to vote in further detail presented at year level assemblies or similar. We can even run ‘enrolment sessions’ during a lunch break to support students in completing this process (note: we will need a teacher present to act as a ‘witness’ in the event that enrolment forms are completed by students). 

Professional Development:

We also run free teacher professional learning sessions, where we are happy to meet with teaching teams (face to face or online) to ‘walk through’ the Passport to Democracy resources, support planning and answer any questions staff may have about our programs and resources. 

To begin the process of booking a session, and to seek more information, please fill out the form at: https://passport.vec.vic.gov.au/booking or feel free to email us via education@vec.vic.gov.au.

I look forward to hearing from you!