THE SIX candidates standing for Bournemouth East in this year's election were grilled by school pupils during a debate on Wednesday.

Organised by sixth form student, Ellie MacDonald, the candidates introduced themselves to Years 7 to 13 of Bournemouth School for Girls, on Castle Gate Close, and took part in a question and answer session.

Tobias Ellwood (Conservatives), Jon Nicholas (Liberal Democrats), Dr Melanie Semple (Labour), David Hughes (UKIP) and Alisdair Keddie (Green Party) and David Ross (independent) all took the opportunity to be part of the event.

Subjects including education, NHS, economy and immigration were the topics of discussion, to help some of the older students to decide who they would vote for during the general election on May 7.

Ellie said: "We had an introductory session first, where each parliamentary candidate was given five minutes to introduce themselves, explain their policies and say what they would do for Bournemouth if they were voted in.

She added: "That first session was open to all, from Years 7 to 13, with the idea behind it being that we start teaching people from a young age about politics.

"Then we had the debate, where I started with a warm-up question and then the debates themselves were split into four topics, with the students deciding who won each round and picked an overall winner."

Alistair Brien, headteacher of Bournemouth School for Girls, said: "Young people are often accused of political apathy. However, watching the hustings, which was organised entirely by the school political society and was in front of a packed audience, you can see that is clearly not the case.

"The candidates were all put through their paces with some very thought provoking and intelligent questions from the young people."