ELECTION fever is sweeping the campus at Fair Oak's Wyvern College of Technology.

Soon students will be pouring through the college's general election style polling booths to cast their votes.

The candidates, who are year eight students, are Joseph Bennet (Conservative) Michael Armstrong (Green) Ben Harris (Labour) and Bethan Evans (Liberal Democrats).

At each assembly this week they have been rolling out their plans of how they would run the country. And they have had plenty of help from the real politicians.

For joining them at each assembly and helping to write their hustings speeches have been Eastleigh's Westminster hopefuls Conor Burns (Conservative) Chris Huhne (Liberal Democrat) and Chris Watt (Labour)

There is another group of non-partisan students who are running the electoral register, the polling station and counting the votes.

The student voters will have a ballot paper and the whole voting experience will be as close as possible to the real thing.

Teacher Sarah Herrity, who has arranged the mock election, said: "This is proving to a marvellous opportunity for the students to think about why casting a vote is important.

"The college is alive with talk of the election and staff are commenting to me about the buzz and interest generated by the event."

The number of young voters expected to cast their vote in the real May 5 poll is expected to be low. It is hoped that Wyvern pupils can learn to catch the voting habit.