Here’s a few tips on how to plan successful elections for your school council:
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Category: involver blog
Hello from involver: newsletter number 4!
Scottish schools are back, and there’s not too long before all the other UK schools will be too. But we know you’ve still been working hard, as have we, and this is what’s been going on:
News: Student voice support is taking a beating in some LAs
We’ve been hearing from a lot of Local Authority colleagues across the UK who’ve been updating us on whether their services are facing cut-backs. Unfortunately, in some areas, we’re seeing major cuts for children and young people’s services as part of the drive to cut the deficit.
If you’ve already been in touch to tell us what’s happening where you are, then many thanks. If you’ve got a moment to keep us informed, please email us, info@involver.org.uk.
As we get a fuller a picture we’ll be writing up a short, broad report about how student voice support seems to have been affected nation-wide.
Resource: Linking Citizenship and student voice
The student voice CPD resource that we wrote for the Association of Citizenship Teaching (ACT), targeted at Local Authority advisors, is now available online. It’s a half day session and free at:
http://www.teachingcitizenship.org.uk/page?p=84
Blog: School council success: improvement or representation?
What’s your school council really about? How do you measure its success? Is it by what it changes or how well it represents all pupils’ views? These are Asher’s thoughts (and a dad joke):
http://involver.org.uk/2010/08/school-council-success-improvement-or-representation/
Training: Assemblies, Twilights, Full-Day and On-going Support
We’re reorganising our training – which isn’t that exciting – but the fact that we’re going to be running peer training soon is! We ran our first session training up some young people to do just that on Wednesday. This will be in partnership with a national youth-led organisation. Watch this space for more info:
http://involver.org.uk/training
Resource: Simple Student Voice Audit Tool
We’ve had a good response to the simple audit tool that we put together, and schools are finding it really useful to get feedback on how well they’re doing (if you’re still waiting for feedback, it is on its way, we’re just making sure it’s fully customised and useful for your school, so is taking a while). We’re working on an all-singing, all-dancing version which we’ll keep you posted on too. Try out the simple version here:
http://involver.org.uk/resources/simple-student-voice-audit/
Video: Pupils planning lessons
We came across this great video on Teachers TV this week. It’s from a few years back, but well worth a watch to see another great approach to student voice:
http://www.teachers.tv/videos/planning-with-pupils
Blog: 3 lessons we’ve learned setting up a social enterprise
Greg’s been travelling around the UK again feeling reflective as he stares out the train window, and has blogged on three lessons we’ve learnt when setting up involver. Do you have anything to add:
http://involver.org.uk/2010/08/3-lessons-learned-startup-social-enterprise/
Music: August’s involver spotify playlist
It’s a brill mix of top tunes and probably the best yet. If you’re still not on spotify, you can get it here (http://www.spotify.com/uk/) – it’s free and amazing. Playlist link:
http://open.spotify.com/user/scyne/playlist/3sebGGM3jOt4SjOGg5XMgw
Hope to hear from you all soon,
Greg and Asher @ involver
How do you talk about the success of your school council?
When people visit your school do you tell them:
(a) About how this great group has redesigned the uniform, carried out an in-depth study into learning styles, raised thousands of pounds and reduced the school’s carbon footprint to zero?
(b) How it has enabled students from across the school to work together, been a channel for frustrated students to be heard and made staff think about things differently?
Almost every school I go to tells me the (a) type things – and the problems they talk about are similarly about their inability to make visible improvements to the school. But, if I ask them what their school council is they will say it’s,
a democratic body of students, there to give the students a voice in the running of the school.
They very rarely say it’s,
a group of keen and able students who help the staff.
But more and more frequently I meet teachers who tell me they’ve selected a few of the people on the council ‘to help it work better – because some of the ones who got elected might struggle’, or even that they’ve done away with elections completely to make the school council ‘more effective’.
More effective at what?
What are the success criteria for a democratic organisation?
I would suggest that the most important is how well it involves everyone, not how well it involves the ‘right’ people. If you need to change the system to make it more effective this should be to make it more inclusive, not more efficient.
But if you’re going to change the system (and I think most schools need to), why not do both? Getting the whole school involved in identifying issues, coming up with solutions and taking action will result in far more changes and and wider engagement. Focus on spreading discussion and action to class councils, rather than pulling it in to the school council. Use whole school meetings, have online forums and noticeboards that the whole school can contribute to, set up action groups that anyone can be on, set up ‘social action time’ when the whole school is supported to work on their own projects.
* Fascist dictator of the 1920s and 30s, Benito Musolinni is often claimed to ‘have made the trains run on time’, it may well be that even this achievement is over-stated: http://www.snopes.com/history/govern/trains.asp
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….
Get started, but change things up
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, but don’t try to learn everything
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:
- To a good standard
- Quickly
- Without paying
- Which will benefit you again in the future
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 …
Be wary of overplaying connections
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!
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 DramaLarge London Comprehensive
My response:
Keep it simple. No more than a couple of sentences on each.
- Why is student voice important to us (staff and students)?
- What does this mean in our work (what influence will students have in decision-making and T&L)?
- What does this look like (list any particular activities that will take place – evaluations, students as teachers, etc.)
- How will we measure success (what are your success criteria, how and when will you measure them)?
- 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?
Hello from involver: Newsletter number 3!
The summer break is almost upon us (or already here, depending on where in the UK you are), so we hope you’ve had a great year!
Here’s a round up of what we’ve been up to over the last month:
Blog: School councils and student voice: why bother?
Greg says, ‘I’m working from Scotland for most of this week, which meant a very long eight hour train journey! After a double espresso, I was feeling a bit reflective about some of the things that we’re doing with involver and why we’ve been doing them.’ Here are his thoughts:
http://involver.org.uk/2010/07/school-councils-and-student-voice-why-bother/
Training: Making your school council READY!
Lots of schools are thinking about how they can improve their school council or student voice next year – we can help you make it READY (yes, that’s an acronym, have a look here if you want to know what for):
http://involver.org.uk/2010/07/school-council-training-get-in-touch/
Resource: Great set of student voice resources from Australia
Asher came across this series of presentations and supporting resources, which was created by Nick Rate, a trainer from Australia. He’s recorded it all so the people he supports in far flung places down under can access them, but of course it means we all can, we love the internet:
http://www.jogtheweb.com/run/AlhYPd3PMcUd/Student-Voice
Video: Make Your Voice Heard: Discover Democratic Education
A great video from the States about why ‘doing democracy’ in schools is so important. It is included in the set above, but worth a special mention:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_LbZ3XcfK4
Project: Speaker’s School Council Awards 2011
After a hugely successful opening year, you can now register your interest in the Speakers School Council Awards 2011. It’s a great way to get your achievements recognised, so to get involved, hop over to:
http://www.speakersschoolcouncil.org
Evaluation: Student voice/school council progress this year?
How have you been getting on with student voice, this year? It’s not easy to get right, and it still takes work and support even when it’s a success. We’ve built a very short audit tool to help you reflect. Fill it out and we’ll even provide you with personalised feedback and ideas if you want us to:
http://involver.org.uk/participate/simple-student-voice-audit/
Network: A new Student Voice and School council Linkedin group
For those of you that use Linkedin (for those who don’t: it’s kind of like a professional Facebook), we’ve set up a group to connect and inform people about student voice and school councils. We’re still finding our way around LinkedIn, but our teacher friends tell us it’s very useful. So take a look, and join at: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=3089339
Networking-fun: Fantasy Democraball!
We’ve set up a fantasy football mini-league for our friends, colleagues and contacts, so please join and invite oithers. You don’t need to know anything about football, just how to add up to £100,000,000. It’s a head-to-head league, so each game you’ll be playing against another person from the citizenship/student voice/youth democracy world (your skill in beating them will be a good ice-breaker topic for when you next meet them at a conference). It’s free to sign up. Once you’ve picked your team use this code to join the ‘Democraball!’ league: 116742-35727
http://fantasy.premierleague.com
So have a great summer!
And remember, if you want to get in touch about anything we’re up to, then please email us at info@involver.org.uk. We’re also always keen to hear about and share good practice, new resources or developments in student voice.
Greg and Asher @ involver