Author: Greg

We had a great meeting with an organisation called User Voice last week.

Led by best-selling author, and ex-offender, Mark Johnson, they aim to reduce re-offending. Considering 75% of young offenders re-offend within two years of their release from prison, clearly an important job.

One of the ways they are doing this is through prison councils – like school councils but in prisons. And though their ‘users’ might be there for different reasons, talking about some of the similarities led to some really interesting discussions.

Prisons, like schools, have to listen to the views of their prisoners. Mark said that:

‘some Governors just get a couple of prisoners into their office to show that they are listening to their views. Other Governors might get together a forum of prisoners that they know will agree with them, to show they are listening’

Now go back and replace ‘Governor’ with ‘Headteacher’, and ‘prisoner’ with ‘student’. This sounds very familiar when thinking about student voice in schools.

So we’re going to help User Voice with resources for elections, and keeping prison councils energised. We’ll hopefully work with them on some regional youth events too later in the year.

Great to link up with such an inspiring organisation, and one involver can learn a lot from.

Greg

See:

http://www.participationworks.org.uk/spotlight-pwne-members/greg-sanderson-involver

Oh and also see Asher look very funny at:

http://changemakers.squarespace.com/professionals/2010/3/5/involving-changemakers.html

Aisha Forbes, a good friend of involver, is involved with Youth Producing Change this year.

It’s an innovative program of youth-produced short films from across the globe showcasing young people’s perspectives on human rights crises. Ten films will be shown from teen film makers from London, Mozambique and New York, and they will be present to participate in discussion following the screenings.

Screening takes place the Ritzy in Brixton (details on the facebook invite here) so get along if you want to learn more!

Big week for us last week – the Speaker’s School Council Awards was launched. This is the project that Parliament asked Asher and I to help with. The event was a real success, and the young people from Brecknock Primary School and Little Heath Secondary presented their projects brilliantly. It was also great to hear how passionate and driven the Speaker is to support education.

A good few MPs attended, as well as lots of important people in the active citizenship field. Jo Swinson MP (a passionate supporter of school councils and active citizenship) made a great video about the event – well done Jo!

And here’s the promo video for the Award:

After only a few days, over 500 schools have registered. Your school should too: visit http://speakersschoolcouncil.org to sign up, and please forward on to any teachers that you know!

This week we’ve moved in with Changemakers, an exciting and well-established charity who are based just up the road from our old office. They aim to create a world in which young people have the confidence to lead and everyone understands we need them to.

We’ve had several meetings with their Chief Exec Adam Nichols over the last few months, and he’s been really supportive of what we’re up to with involver (thanks Adam!). Having identified areas of common interest, they were kind enough to invite us in for a few months!

Anyway, it’s a cool office, everyone here has been really welcoming, and it’s a great and exciting opportunity for us to work together. We’re looking into how we might provide a joint service to schools, and also working on a new social enterprise project (more to come).

It’s also interesting to see how different organisations work in different ways – having worked in small offices (for charities), and big offices (for Government) it’s useful to see how an established and successful charity operates/moves forward. And get some tips! I have a theory that you can tell a lot about an organisation by who makes the tea and coffee – and here everyone makes it for everyone else (a good sign).

There’s a lot of crossover in our thinking, and we’re really pleased to be linking up.

Greg

Little Heath School in Reading is a school that we’ve worked with for a while now. We were really pleased to be invited to their annual student voice conference a few weeks back.

Little Heath is a great example of the benefits that can be gained when young people are given trust and responsibility to influence core areas of their education. The school has six student voice groups, each of which have a special job in the school. These are:

• The Building group (looking at school environment)
• What makes a good lesson group (teaching and learning)
• The Independent Learning group (trying to define independent learning)
• Safe to learn group (Anti-bullying)
• STARS project (students as researchers)

The school council’s job is to coordinate these groups, with the help of the Student Voice Leaders. The Student Voice Leaders led the whole day from start to finish, and the school’s commitment by taking around 150 students (from the various groups) out of school, to a conference venue was great. They were able to get a lot done in a short space of time. Very impressive!

The secret to Little Heath’s success in getting so many young people involved stems from three things, I think.

• Firstly, culture and ethos in the school – it’s clear from the style of relationships that teachers genuinely want to hear what students think, will take it seriously, and want to set up ways to encourage this more formally. Staff are willing to run with their ideas, and recognise that good school democracy/citizenship is often a bit of a step into the unknown. They also understand that trusting young people is not losing power – it’s helping everyone to work together in the same direction.

• Secondly, with so many different groups, a school council, and student voice leaders, they are able to get a wide range of young people involved because there is a wide range of ways to be involved – pretty simple really!

• Thirdly, the priority given to student voice is more than just words; it’s a member of staff’s job to support and facilitate it. Jon Linz, the very talented and passionate student voice coordinator, has dedicated time in his week to support this work.

Anyway, enough from me – here’s more from the students themselves: