Alison – Involver

This is a question that I am sure many schools struggle with, and I’d be lying if I said Little Heath hadn’t faced this problem over the years as well. The answer to this question can be the key to success in student voice.

It might be that the attendance at your school council is dwindling, or the uptake for your new peer mentoring scheme is low, or maybe you are struggling to keep your student voice “cool”. I don’t claim to have a definitive answer but I hope to offer some practical advice that you may find useful.

Publicise it! Ensure that the students know what is going on, what your plans are and how they can be involved. Go into assemblies once every half term, produce a mini newsletter, create posters and display boards around school, go into their tutor times, send letters home. You name it, it’s possible. But most crucially get out and speak to them. Chat with them about what student voice is, what activities are available, get them to share their thoughts with you, get their advice.

Be inclusive. Don’t hand pick the good students or reject the more challenging ones when they volunteer. Each one has something to offer. It is important to go out to your students as well as expecting them to come to you. At Little Heath, our Student Voice Leaders (a small group of senior students who each take a lead on an area of Student Voice) regularly go into tutor groups to chat informally to students about their lessons and other areas of school life, but also to share with them what is going on in the student voice world.

One of the greatest, and most effective, outcomes of student voice is that students feel valued. Ensure that everyone knows that your school council, for example, is there, not just because you have to have one but because you want to hear what your students have to say. Show them that their work has impact, that it makes a difference and that it can be rewarding. This gives students a sense of ownership and that their school council is their school council.

Informal structure as well as formal structure can work. Elections are great but don’t always work for everyone. Having an informal place where suggestions can be made and students can show an interest is also really helpful. This can either be a place that allows students to drop in and share ideas with you or it might even be a suggestion box that is checked regularly.

These are just a few ideas but I hope that in some way they are helpful to you.

Alison,
Student Voice Coordinator
Little Heath School

This is the first of a series of blog posts that we have asked Alison to write for us, to give us an insight into what it’s like to be employed as a Student Voice Assistant in your gap year and to keep us to up to date with what’s going on at a school that has excellent student voice practice and we love working with. We hope you find her experiences interesting and entertaining.

Asher and Greg

Hello all,

Welcome to my first blog! My name is Alison Seymour. I am 18 years old and last summer I completed my A levels at Little Heath School in Reading. I now work at the school as Student Voice Assistant and strange as it may have seemed at first, the staff room has now become like a second home. I have been asked to write a fortnightly blog for Involver and I am so excited to get started and share with you my experience of student voice.

Over my time as a student some of my roles included chairing the School Council and later our Student Voice Leaders, being on the Sixth Form Committee and also groups that focus on teaching and learning and how the buildings and physical structure of the school can be developed to enhance learning.

In my role as Student Voice Assistant, I now have the opportunity to work together with young people to allow them to experience and learn what I have. It is a privilege to see how they can develop and learn skills that can be used beyond their school career. Pupil voice and youth participation is an amazing way of allowing young people to make a difference. It might be in their school, local community or simply achieving a personal goal. That, in a nut shell, is what I believe to be central to pupil voice.

A really exciting part of my job is to plan our annual Student Voice Conference. This year it takes place on the 2nd February and, since being back from the Christmas holidays, much preparation has begun. We take 150 students out of school and spend the day doing different workshops and also have a question panel in the afternoon. It is an excellent opportunity to spend time with a variety of students discussing topics that are at the heart of school life.

This year the conference has three main strands. Our STARS (Students As ResearcherS) group will continue onto the next stage of their research. 40 students have spent the last year looking at different areas of teaching and learning, such as classroom environment, praise and reward and “what makes a good lesson?”, and how, we as a school, can celebrate success but also, improve these areas. The second strand is looking at Student Leadership and how we can develop a competency framework that allows students to be recognised for the ways that they show leadership. Thirdly, looking at student Rights and Responsibilities and how it feeds into a Language for Learning.

I am really excited to be a part of this day and am so interested to see the thoughts that the students have, because more often than not they are right on the money!

I’ll be back in two weeks! See you then :)