I’ve just come back from a multi-candidate meeting with the year 9 girls of Wellington East in my suburb of Mt Victoria. The girls have been studying the election process for some time.

I have been to events there, but never spoken in the Hall. As the official greeter students escorted us through the school I thought of how many girls must have done similar things since my mother was a student there during World War II. She told us stories of going to trenches during air raid warnings, and being there when a big earthquake toppled some brickwork.

National, the Greens, ACT and Labour candidates presented short speeches and were questioned. The girls are going to vote in their own poll on 8 November. For over an hour they concentrated hard (as far as I could tell).

School student discussion can be more satisfying than such meetings with adults. Questions at suburban multi-candidate meetings are mostly partisan attempts to embarrass the target, not to get information.

School questions are genuine. The students want to know things so they ask simple questions that are actually harder to answer – like "what is the practical difference between what you are promising and what the others are promising for school education?" or "how would you make things better in health when there is never enough money".

They politely clapped the usual recital from the big-promising parties (Labour and the Greens) of things we would all like to see. But follow-up questions made it plain they they knew such lists of desirables may not be persuasive without indicating relative priorities, or saying how they will be paid for.

I’ll be interested to hear how the girls vote.