As the new school year starts you might be thinking about how to give student voice in your school the kick up the bum is desperately needs. Last year’s school council was a bit of a washout, wasn’t it? There was a lot of moaning, a fair bit of grumbling, that one idea that didn’t quite come off and then a whole load of prevarication.
If only the kids on the school council weren’t that negative, feckless bunch. It would all have been different if you’d had the school’s elite, the committed, quick-witted, leaders of the student body driving things forward.
So how do we get them involved?
How about creating positions with cachet, status and a rigorous process of selection? We’ll have advertisements, interviews, regular meetings and a place in the School Development Plan. We’ll call it the Student Leadership Team and give them all titles mirroring the Senior Leadership Team to show how seriously we’re taking them.
Now we’ve got a strong, confident student voice speaking directly to every department and to the SeniorLT. Sorted.
I’ve seen that thought process in many schools but I think it fundamentally misses the point of student voice. There are four reasons why schools need a strong student voice:
- Learning:
- Skills: giving students the chance to learn skills of team work, negotiation, communication and project management.
- Citizenship: for students to learn, through experience, about their responsibilities to create the community they want to be part of and what a democracy is, its potential, limitations and inherent compromises.
- ‘Well-being’: giving students constructive alternative routes to resolve problems and raise personal concerns.
- Evaluation: collecting the views of the school ‘users’ to see how they feel the school is performing.
- Obligation: the UNCRC requires that young people have some say in decisions that affect them. In Wales school have to have a school council and whilst legislation in the rest of the UK doesn’t require it, it strongly suggest that it should be happening.
So which of these does StuLT miss? Well, probably all of them if it is constructed as suggested above. The key element that’s missing is universality. If the reasons for student voice that I have given are valid it’s important that all students are involved in student voice. Choosing those who already do well and give staff the kinds of answers they want to hear does little for the majority of students. It also undermines your evaluation and attempts to meet your obligations.
So, am I against StuLTs? No, I think they can be a great way of tying students in to the decision-making processes in schools, but they need to be built on the democratic structures that exist (such as class and school councils), not undermine or replace them. The ideas about cachet, status, rigorous selection, etc. could – no, should – be applied to the school council. Make your election process demanding and informative. Get each member of the school council to take on a role on the StuLT. Impress on those standing the importance of their role.
StuLTs need to be considered as part of a whole school student voice plan. A plan with students, not the school, at its heart. A plan built around learning not school improvement. So every student gains the learning and well-being on offer, and all of their views form part of the school’s self-evaluation. School improvement will naturally grow from this.
So when you’re trying to redesign student voice in your school think about it as an educator, not an administrator. Start with these two questions and build from there:
- What do I want it to teach students about the world?
- Which students do I want to learn this?