Student voice policy – 5 quick tips

An email I received from a teacher friend last week (name and school removed to avoid blushes):

hey

I’m revamping my department handbook and I’m at the policy section, i’d really like an amazing students voice policy but I know we are very medicore at it so

HELP

________________________________

??? ???
Head of Drama

Large London Comprehensive

My response:

Keep it simple. No more than a couple of sentences on each.

1. Why is student voice important to us (staff and students)?
2. What does this mean in our work (what influence will students have in decision-making and T&L)?
3. What does this look like (list any particular activities that will take place – evaluations, students as teachers, etc.)
4. How will we measure success (what are your success criteria, how and when will you measure them)?
5. When and how will you review this policy?

So the whole thing should be no more than a page in your handbook.
I would obviously suggest you work on all of these questions with your staff and students.  A very simple way to do this would be to write down your first thoughts an d give them to groups of students and your staff to comment on.  This could be done online using Google Docs so people could see how others are updating it and many people can work on it at once.

Regards,

Asher

I think this would stand pretty well for writing a new policy for most things. What do you think?