Asher and I went to the launch of the Youth Citizenship Commission’s Report in Westminster today. It was great to hear people talk about the value of school councils alongside class councils. The commissioners really understood the value of pupil voice and effective school councils, it was clearly expressed that pupil voice has to be respected and the young people involved need to be given real power in the school decision-making processes, otherwise the work can be disillusioning do more damage than good.
There was also a big mention for the School Council Standard, which is a project we are working on getting funding for at the moment – so a good morning for School Councils. It’ll be interesting to see what the Government does the Comission’s findings.
Vicky
#1 by SchoolCouncilsUK on 28/06/2009 - 11:48 am
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The strength which which school councils were included was great, but I did feel the recommendations were skewed towards engagement in 'politics with a big P', particularly voting. Obviously these are important, but I think there's far more to citizenship than that: constructively engaging with your peers; helping your local community; campaigning on issues that concern you; being a conscious consumer and so on.
In discussing the recommendations at the end with another delegate it was pointed out to me that there was also very little looking at how to engage young people over the age of 16, but who were not in school. It seemed to him that even people in college had not really been considered.
Asher