InvolverTo make school councils work, they need to be active and ‘doing’, sustainable and fun!
Our approach to this is to help school councils become READY for ACTION:
Our work aims to help schools and colleges to create smart school councils that use this model.
Take a look around our resources and projects to find out more!
Here’s a few tips on how to plan successful elections for your school council:
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On a train again, heading back to London after a few days in the Edinburgh Festival, I thought I’d write a few reflections on starting up our social enterprise.
Not to suggest that we’ve had world-beating success or anything, but to look back on our experience of developing an organisation around a set of ideas, that’s given us both a job!
So here we go….
The great benefit you have as a new organisation is that you can change big things very quickly.
You need to get up and running and making money in the area that you want to work, but don’t feel bad about making big changes when you’re starting up: change things up!
There’s no six month review on a new three year strategy, there’s no board of trustees to pass things through, there’s just good ideas and not-so-good ideas.
It’s your job to find the good ideas and use them to direct what you do, and how you describe it.
That’s not to suggest that you shouldn’t plan ahead, but being able to change things to make sure you get them right.
Ross, a former-colleague who’s now in the Digital Diplomacy Group at FCO described us as being ‘agile’ – I think this is a good way to describe it. And being agile in changing times like these is definitely a good thing!
We’re constantly tweaking our business plan, and it’s always out of date pretty quickly. It’s quite funny looking back at the earliest versions and how far our thinking has developed – hopefully in the right direction!
And as things develop …
You’ll have to learn stuff.
This might seem obvious, but some of this stuff that you’ll have to learn is probably stuff you might not be that interested in learning. Sad but true.
Having worked in big organisations like the civil service, where you know your job description down to the letter (so that you can palm off as much work as possible!), it’s clear that this is the opposite.
In a small organisation like ours (two people), being versatile is important. And not always in a fun way: playing chief executive is fun, but we both need to be admin assistants too!
Knowing the limits of your versatility is the tough bit: the trick is to be able to differentiate between knowing when it’s worth taking the time to learn something, and when you’re best off paying an expert to do it.
Why spend two weeks learning to use an accountancy package when you can pay an accountant to do them in a day? Resources may be scarce, but it’s important to remember what you’re good at, and why you’re there in the first place.
I guess if you can do something:
Then do it! If it’s a one off that will take ages, then don’t!
Sometimes you’ve got friends you can call on to help you with this stuff, but …
Just because you’re excited about your new organisation, and you’ve got a really good contacts, it doesn’t mean you should push them all really hard to help you.
At best, you could force them to reluctantly give you a hand on something they don’t want to do, at worst, you could lose them as a contact all together.
Better to gently remind people of what you’re up to, and open up any opportunities to them. Reminding people is usually pretty easy too, because of the sheer number of ways that you can contact people – twitter, facebook, linkedin, phone, email, letter etc…
Of course, give your cards out widely, chat about what you’re doing with everyone, and there might be a time when you’re begging your Auntie’s son for some legal advice, but in general, I think it’s best to be patient with your efforts.
This could be anyone – a web designer, a lawyer, or an SEO expert – and I think the rule holds for them all.
Interestingly, I see this A LOT in London, maybe because there are just more blaggers here. A friend and I were talking about the same thing within the music industry- people mistake having a contact, with actually doing the work themselves – dangerous!
Lots of schools are beginning to think about training their school council, or student voice groups, for next academic year.
If you want to make your student voice READY, then get in touch! You can read more about our training here.
It might be two days training to breathe new life into your tired school council, a staff INSET on student voice, or a half day workshop supporting students to be on an interview panel. Whatever it is, all of our training aims to make student voice:
If you’re on Linked in (or is it Linkedin?), and you’re interested in school councils and student voice, then we’ve just set up a new group to connect people.
If you’re on there, and want to join, then visit http://lnkd.in/mpSBk8, or search for Student Voice and School Councils Education Network.
Thanks!
School councils. Student voice. Giving young people a say in how their school is run. Sounds like effort, doesn’t it? Kids are there to be educated, not to take part in it, right?
So why do so many schools bother with it? Because the Government says you have to listen to pupils? Because Ofsted might come and chat to your school council? Because some kids had a couple of good ideas and you might as well give it a go? Because some kids want to practice being politicians, and you need to give them a way to do that?
Let’s be clear : schools present a unique opportunity for young people to learn about democracy.
And let’s be double – clear: this opportunity is being missed by too many schools.
Student voice and school councils are often tokenistic. Young people are told that they have influence (but only the cleverest or most confident are allowed to use it), that they are listened to (as long as they give the right answer), and that they are free to talk about what they want (but can’t actually do anything to make things better).
Our approach is to help schools make the most of this opportunity, challenge tokenism, and help get more young people involved.
Very simply, we want young people to understand how their ideas can turn into actions which can turn into improvements for themselves and others. Learning democracy by ‘doing democracy’. Less sitting back and moaning about things, and more action!
I was working in Islamia Primary School in Brent yesterday, helping their new student voice team to plan for next year. One of the big ideas that came up was trying to get mirrors in the girls’ toilets. The girls’ headscarves were coming loose during the school day, and they had no mirrors to check if they were on properly. When they return from their summer break, the team plan to get going on this idea. They are six years old.
Now this might just be a few mirrors, but if young people can see how they can influence their lives and surroundings from a young age this plants important seeds. As they become secondary age students they will believe that they can take action and change things, and then university students will too.
Young people will find it more difficult to have the desire or to understand how they can change things in adult life if they’ve had no practice! Or if they’ve been kept in a simulated democratic world where they are ‘listened to’ but never have the experience of negotiating, collaborating and struggling to achieve their own, shared aims.
And this should never be just about training the next generation of politicians – if you know how to ‘plan’, ‘do’ and ‘reflect’ a project with a group of people, that is useful whatever you choose to do in life.
It’s also very important that schools connect learning about the same concepts. We’re all agreed that democracy and empowerment are important concepts, right?
So let’s use every opportunity we can to connect what we can learn about in the news, in the curriculum, with what we do in student voice. It’s about connecting what others do, with what we do.
Let’s reflect on MPs expenses, by talking about school councillor expenses; let’s discuss the coalition government by talking about how easy it is to decide things by committee; let’s think about the civil rights movement and suffragettes when planning a student voice election. We grasp things best when we understand them from different angles.
Not seeing these links can undermine everything. You might be less inspired about by Barack Obama’s democratic journey if your ‘democratic’ school council is just the ten brightest pupils, picked by the head teacher!
So let’s be clear: a healthy democracy needs curious, active people. A healthy democracy needs healthy democratic education, and schools are central to that.
Let’s not be complacent.
Greg