As regular readers of our website will know, we think participatory budgeting is a fantastic way to get your whole school involved in pupil voice. Loads of schools do it already through getting the whole school involved in deciding on new playground equipment or how a new building should be fitted out, but coming up with a good structure for it can transform student voice in your school.
This guy wants the chance to help schools across Europe learn about good ways to run participatory budgeting, but he needs your help. He’s asking for small donations (even just a couple of pounds) to fund the making and distribution of this series of interactive videos.
Watch the video he’s made explaining the idea and if you can pledge some money, please do (I have already).
A different kind of chair and a different kind of tip, but you see what I’m getting at.
I’m currently mentoring the co-chairs of Haringey Youth Council and I came up with this list of tips for them, which I thought others might find useful.
What are your tips for making meetings run smoothly and involving everyone? Add them in the comments below.
Before the meeting
If at all possible make sure information goes out before the meeting, so you can spend the meeting discussing and making decisions, not listening to presentations.
Have timings for each item on the agenda. This will mean you can get through the whole thing as everyone knows when they need to draw the discussion to a close (or when you’re going to force them to).
Set up the room so that everyone can see one another and you can see everyone. There’s nothing more annoying than wanting to speak in a meeting but not being seen.
When any new people or visitors come to the meeting introduce yourself and welcome them.
In the meeting
Sit next to the person taking the minutes so you can check that you’re both keeping up.
When you want people to move to a decision, summarise what the decision is: don’t try to summarise the whole discussion.
Write up options and decisions so that everyone can see them. This helps avoid confusion and repetition.
When people put their hand up to speak, give them a nod and write their name on a list. This way they can put their hand down and concentrate on the discussion knowing they won’t be forgotten.
Add your name to the list when you want to speak, this will stop you jumping in.
If it’s important to the discussion that you hear from everyone, make sure you go round the whole group and specifically ask everyone for an opinion.
When people give opinions, ask them to explain their reasoning. This will move the debate forward.
Meetings should be about action – what you are going to do – so try to move the discussion into the future tense. Discussions in the past tense tend to be about blame, present tense tends to be about opinions, but future tense tends to be about action. It’s easier to find consensus over the what to do in the future than who to blame for what happened in the past.
If you think everyone agrees with an idea, check by asking if anyone wants to speak against it. If no one does, then you are safe to assume everyone agrees.
Be aware of jargon or ideas that people new to the meeting might not understand. You can either explain them or ask the person speaking to briefly explain the term for new members, guests, etc.
Greg and I weren’t expecting that we could see a better school council meeting than those we’d already seen in the Czech Republic, but the last school we visited on our tour was the most impressive of the lot.
The ‘Storks’ of Dolní Žandov School have a fantastic structure and flow to their meetings that seemed to engage everyone whilst being really focused on action – they named themselves the Storks after the family of storks that roosts on a chimney over-looking the school. So what made their meeting so special? Well, what was clear was that they had a really good structure that everyone understood which I’ll try to summarise for you.
Before the meeting:
The school council realise that getting certain things in place before the meeting will help the meeting to be a success. They ensure that the school council noticeboard/bulletin is up to date with the most recent school council activities, and that everyone can see the latest information easily.
They also make sure that the minutes and photos from the previous meeting are up on the school council website, as well as the agenda for the coming meeting.
During the meeting:
Here’s a picture of the meeting structure that the school council use each time. Translations below!
1. Welcome
The chair (who rotates from meeting to meeting) starts by welcoming everyone to the meeting, and running through any apologies that have been made.
2. A game
The meeting started with a game to get everyone up, moving and having fun together. Once this had run its course, they reflected on what had worked in the game, what had made it hard and how this related to their school council meetings. Importantly, the game achieved all of this in a few minutes and the group were able to move onto the rest of the meetin
The game was called ‘Finding Nemo’. Basically everyone had to wonder around with their eyes closed calling ‘Nemo’ until they bumped into someone who wasn’t calling out. They then had to stop and be quiet – they have found Nemo. Eventually everyone is still and quiet.
3. Tasks from last time
After welcoming everyone to the meeting the Chair went through the tasks that should have been completed. He referred back to the previous minutes and checked that each person had done what they were supposed to. If they hadn’t completed the task (some hadn’t), they were asked why.
4. Class issues
Next, the reps from each class were asked what issues their class had asked them to raise. They started with the youngest students and moved up through the school. What was particularly good about the way they did this was how the Chair questioned the other students. One of the youngest class reps raised the issue of having a greater variety of school dinners.
The Chair initially responded that there were various pressures that the school was under regarding nutritional standards and so on. He then seemed to check himself and rather than kicking the idea into the long grass as he had seemed inclined to do he asked the young rep, “how do you think we could change this?” They came up with a plan to meet the cook and discuss it with her. It continued like this until there was a list of tasks to complete.
5. Splitting up tasks
The group then looked at the long list of tasks that had been created, and made sure that each one had a person to be in charge of it. It took a while to make sure that everything had a name next to it, but it is seen as a really important way to make sure that things get done.
6. Repeating the most important tasks
To ensure that everyone remembers what the most crucial tasks are, the chair runs through the most important of them to help everyone understand. This happens really quickly, but is seen as important to show everyone that their little task fits into a bigger project or idea.
7. Next meeting
The school council have a rotating chair, since they feel it is important for different people to get a chance to facilitate the meeting. It helps students to chair, when they have seen their peers do it. It means that the teachers don’t have to lead the meeting, or commit themselves to do every task either – this is truly student voice and student action!
8. Reflection
A really important part of the meeting, that has really helped this school council to get better and better. Each time they spend five minutes asking for comments on what went well, and what could be improved about the meeting. It’s really an open forum for the students and teachers to reflect on how the structure has gone.
Only one issue came up in this meeting; that the game at the start hadn’t gone perfectly well because there were two Nemos – a student hadn’t understood fully and stopped staying ‘Nemo’ and confused the game.
Another thing that they did well:
Everyone had a clear role. Most school councils that are working well, and organise efficient meetings have really clear roles. This school council was no exception, and they had a variety of roles alongside the traditional positions of chair, vice-chair and secretary. You can see these below:
Role descriptions in a school council in Dobronin, Czech Republic
From the top, these role descriptions translate as – photographer, getting people in pairs, in charge of noticeboard, meeting minutes, IT support, cameraman, T-shirt organiser, spokesperson, information officer, vice-chairperson and chairperson!
So thanks to the school for inviting us. Without doubt, one of the best school councils we’ve ever seen!
By way of an introduction, my name is Cameron and I recently graduated from a Journalism & Media BA. I am very lucky to have been given the opportunity to work with Asher and Greg here at Involver while developing the new Smart School Councils site, so you can
expect to read more from me over the coming weeks.
From my own experience at school, college and university, it has become apparent that the student voice is an important aspect of any educational institution that is too often neglected. When there are channels in place for students to have an input into how their school works, it seems that there is usually no real power to make a change put into their hands. This often leaves student councils and other democratic processes to the few students who have developed a passion for the political and the confidence to challenge their teachers, leaving the majority of students who have their own concerns and ideas without any real ability to be heard.
At Involver, we aim to work with students and teachers to put in place the resources and training necessary to give everyone the chance to get involved helping to improve their school. This helps schools develop a community spirit and collaborative ethos for the benefit of staff and pupils alike, while also teaching young people about responsibility and democracy to prepare them for life after education.
It’s an ideology I am proud to support, and I look forward to contributing to and learning from the Involver team while we produce content for the Smart School Council site. I’m also hoping to hear from students and teachers who are interested in what we do here or have their own ideas about democracy in schools, so please feel free to email or get in touch on the forums.
We are happy to answer any questions you may have about what we do and why we do it.
Our installment today comes from Dobronin village school. It is yet another great school council experience for us with a school council that is clearly working very well. I think the influence of CEDU and the process they have been through with the schools is evident. They have taken all of these schools on residentials and worked with them on problem-solving, negotation and teamwork and it really shows. I would love involver to be able to run something similar for schools in the UK.
Rather than me explaining Dobronin school council to you, this time we have this poster made by last year’s school council so they can do it in their own words.
You can read more about their School Parliament on their website, including a list of their achievements and photos from their residential event.
After the meeting the teachers from the other schools commented on how little the teachers from Dobronin had said in the meeting and how they had put their hands up to speak and waited to be asked like the students. The teachers from Dobronin felt this was very important as it stopped the students always looking to them for answers. We then had a very interesting discussion on how careful teachers have to be to not unduly influence the opinion of the school council. A school council coordinator pointed out that this can be an even bigger problem in class meetings. So how do you ensure that the teacher does not sway the opinions being aired?
Today we had a day off from visiting schools and instead went to meet one of CEDU’s partner organisations in Brno, Masaryk University Civic Education Centre. They are doing really interesting work on adult civic education through libraries. I love the idea of libraries as hubs for civil society.
The word ‘rhetological’ is made up. Just so I can munge two types of entity: rhetorical techniques and logical fallacies.
The Civic Education Centre have translated them into Czech and I think they would be a great addition to the the wall of any citizenship classroom or school council meeting room.
After our visit with the Civic Education Centre and a tour around Brno we drove on to the town near our next school, right in the centre of the Czech Republic. Whilst having supper in our hotel we became involved in a Czech Christmas tradition. Here St Nicholas comes on the 5th/6th of December to give presents to children, but he’s accompanied by devils and angels. Whether you get sweets or a potato and whether you have to answer to the devils or angels depends on how good or bad you’ve been during the year. Two of our hosts, Camila and Filip had their sins and achievements recounted by St Nic, but unfortunately Greg and I missed out as he didn’t speak English.
St Nicholas reading from his book of naughty and nice boys and girls.Two of the devils helping St Nicholas read from his book.St Nicholas was also accompanied by an angel but she didn’t have much to say to our table.
Tomorrow we’ll have another school to tell you about.
