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 part two of a blog on Little Heath’s Student Voice conference. You can read the first part here. This concentrated on the older students who were organising the conference, and the adults that supported them.
This second part will look at the experience of some of the younger pupils who are more recently involved with student voice. Let’s focus on student voice in learning since it’s one of the areas that the school does amazingly well. This centres around the STARs project – Students as Researchers.
The STARs (students as researchers) project is a key part of student voice in Little Heath. It’s designed to give the students an influence in their learning and school-life. Importantly, this isn’t based on whim, but research. Even more importantly, this research is student-led.
This first group looked at the types of homework that students liked most. Lots of students were complaining about their homework so they worked on a questionnaire to send out to pupils. The results were presented to Governors and SLT.
Here’s two year 9 students telling us about their STARs project. As opposed to the first group, this project focuses on classroom teaching. It looks at specific subjects: English, History and ICT in years 7 and 8. A crucial area to look at, and some very useful findings:
This group looked at the help that is available for students within the school. Here’s a member of the group talking us through the teacher questionnaire that they organised, and what will happen to their ideas:
Members of the STARs team can get involved year after year. These two members led a successful project last year, and are doing a first plan for their anti-bullying project this year:
Lots of the learning from the STARs project goes into a booklet which is given out to the school to publicise their work. Here’s the team in charge of making it:
Ongoing reflections on Homework:
Year 7 pupils (I think) talking us through their planner/homework diary/timetable.
They’re encouraged to reflect on what they’ve learnt and their homework, if there was too much or if they really enjoyed it. Teachers would then look at this. It’s a simple but good way to encourage reflection on learning and start a conversation with teachers.
Student voice in school planning:
Year 7 pupils on the Buildings and Environment group looking at how to improve this aspect of their school. They’re starting point is how they would make their school into the ‘dream school’ and they’re drawing a big map. They’re clearly getting a lot from approaching this in a visual way.
Key quote ‘it makes it come to life’
So that’s a taster of some of the great work being worked on by the younger pupils at Little Heath. The range of student voice work is really amazing, and if you’re interested, take a look at my original post from last year’s conference for a bit of analysis into why it works so well.
I thought I’d write a blog that reflected on what we saw and learnt last year. It’s split into two parts because I took LOADS of videos.
So the ‘building blocks’ for success in Little Heath are still the same and still very apparent. Pupils feel open – and are supported by teachers and other pupils – to suggest ideas (good or bad!), there’s a variety of ways for students to get involved, and the support from staff is strong. In terms of staff support, the school has managed to build on what they provided last year.
Mr Linz (Student Voice Coordinator) is now expertly supported by Alison, the new Student Voice Assistant. Last year, Alison was a pupil at the school, but this year she’s a paid member of staff. It’s her job to support Mr Linz, and use her experience as a student to get lots of people involved and improve the school.
She’s very kindly writing a blog for us which you can read here and here. It’s really clear from how the students describe them that they make a great team and helps the school to build on the success that they’ve had. Well done!
As usual, I took some videos of some of the work that the school is doing. You’ll have to excuse my video skills.
First off, we have Bailey, a year 8 student who I’d talked to last year. This year Bailey was really clear on the role that the school’s strong student voice ethos had played in helping him and others. He’s got some great advice on helping shy pupils to get involved. This is something that sits at the heart of what we’re trying to do as an organisation, and it’s great to see Bailey describe this in such a powerful way:
Some great stuff from Jack in Year 11 telling us about the day, and the skills he learnt as a Student Voice Leader. He also stresses the role of a passionate student voice coordinator to support everyone:
Here’s Dalton, from Year 12. He’s got a rather fetching shirt, and is on the buildings committee and helps out on travel to and from school. Back in year 9, he was part of the selection panel to appoint a new head teacher. Key quote ‘being a student voice leader is not all plain-sailing‘. Here his thoughts below:
It’s also important to look at the role of other staff supporting student voice, here’s Ms. Broadhead and Mr. Naylor – a Teaching Assistant at the school – talking about their experience. As a NQT, Ms. Broadhead’s got some interesting reflections on the lip service that many schools pay to student voice:
Here’s Lucy and Daniela talking about the support that older pupils give to year sevens. It’s called the SMILE group, and shows how peer mentoring is important to the school:
Finally for part 1, here’s a short video of Tom working with a group of year 8s. We saw Tom last year explaining what was happening at the conference. I’m sure he won’t mind me saying he was a bit nervous! This year, he’s expertly leading a group on the importance of courage as a leader, and what that means. Great stuff!
In part two, I’ll be talking to more of the younger pupils at the school. Stay tuned and thanks again to Little Heath for inviting me along.
Here’s Alison’s second blog, about the amazing Student Voice Conference at Little Heath! I’ve got a few videos from the day too, which I’ll upload soon.
It’s been an exciting couple of weeks!
Wednesday 2nd February was our annual Student Voice Conference at Little Heath. If I’m being honest I can’t believe it is over for another year! But there is still lots of work to keep us busy.
The conference was a real success.
Alok Sharma, MP for Reading West opened the day and encouraged the students in the importance of youth participation. The three workshops that took place were really thought provoking. Some really interesting ideas have come up as new projects for the STARS (Students As Researchers) to research. A particular favourite of mine is the idea of students having influence in teachers planning and having a say in the content of their lessons and the way it is taught.
The second workshop on student leadership got students thinking about the things that they want to be recognised for and how this can fit into a framework. For example, how the framework could be based around bronze, silver and gold levels. There were so many ways that students would like to be recognised for leadership, not just in Student Voice. They came up with ideas like Duke of Edinburgh, leading reading clubs and doing community service. It is exciting that the content and design for this framework is going to come completely from the students.
The third workshop looked at student Rights and Responsibilities. This linked into behaviour and how students want to feel safe. In addition, they looked at what helps them in the classroom to have a more effective learning experience. The students were also really forthcoming with ideas and how to refresh the schools Code of Conduct document into something more student friendly.
A question panel in the afternoon was a good chance for the students to ask questions to some of the staff. Questions about what they think makes a good learning environment, curriculum developments, advice for pathways after leaving Little Heath and also views on learning from former students.
Overall, the day was a credit to the enthusiasm of the students and their eagerness to be influential in their own education.
One of the main issues that many school councils face is that they don’t include enough students. This often leaves the rest of the school pretty uninterested in what the school council are doing.
In trying to overcome this, here’s Asher giving a few ideas for you on how to think about the traditional school council structure differently.
Hope it’s useful, and that you like the video blog. We’d love to hear what you think, or some ideas on what’s worked for you.
We’re a new (non-partisan) social enterprise trying to find our way in what seems like a very Big Society. Here’s some thoughts on our experience:
Outlook
The Big Society separates the third sector ‘moaners’ from the third sector optimists. It’s divided those who look back fondly on higher spending of the Labour government (who can’t quite come to terms with what’s happening), from those who are looking forward, getting on it with, and making the most of the opportunities the Big Society presents.
To be fair, I could be being a bit naive here.
If I was working for an organisation facing substantial cuts, I’d obviously see it differently. And from our position as a new and small organisation, this big new idea, introduced by a new government, means the playing field is a bit more level for us to get involved. Although competition is high, we’re not trying to muscle into a policy or administration with years of well-developed third sector links.
Naive or not, and without sounding like a cheerleader, I think it’s important that the third sector looks forward to make the most of the policy landscape of the day.
Plain talking
Having seen some amazing new branding from a few charities, I think we’re beginning to see the new administration and Big Society freeing up the sector to talk in plain English. It’s refreshing to see organisations just saying what they do. Saves time when you’re trying to find out. The freedom of not having to align your key message to seven different policy initiatives is good, regardless of how worthy those initiatives are. I do wonder, however, if over time the Big Society might get filled out with new buzzwords which we all start gradually mentioning as time goes by.
A big problem with plain talking about what we do, giving young people an influence in their education, is that I don’t really think the Conservatives will think it fits as part of their traditional approach to education.
That’s okay though, the Big Society doesn’t mean that we’re going to change what we believe in.
Disclaimer: I’m not sure if this is a Big Society thing. The freedom from buzzwords could happen when any new Government comes in. I’m not sure, I’ve only known Labour.
Vague
I’ve lost count of the number of coalition ministers who I’ve seen thrown by the simplest of questions; ‘what is the Big Society?’
No wonder the conference hall was strangely silent during this section of Cameron’s speech. It’s not very inspiring if the ‘salesmen and women’ of the policy are so unclear on what the policy actually is. I think this lack of clarity leads to two things: people who are involved in social action and participation get annoyed because they think the Government are implying that these are new ideas; and those who aren’t involved just switch off.
I get the impression that people working in the sector have got a better idea of what the Big Society might be, than the Government themselves. That might be not such a bad thing.
On the positive side, this vagueness means that third sector organisations have an opportunity to use more plain English (see above).
And although there are headlines about the Big Society (somewhere), it seems like the details are very much up for grabs.
I heard Gove talk last night at a Teaching Leaders graduation event. I’d talked about this with a friend recently, and – whether you like him or not – – seeing him give his speech made me agree that he comes across as very ideological.
I feel the Government know what they want to do, but probably needs some help from us to get there. Frustrated civil servants agree, so I guess what I’m saying is that the lack of detail presents opportunities.
N.B. Despite this, from what we’ve seen I think there are questions about how vague the Big Society actually is. Take the National Citizen Service pilots, for instance. Innovation was encouraged, but only within a very restricitve and scheduled delivery model!
Talking
Big Society has led to more people from more organisations talking to one another. That’s definitely a good thing, because I think the third sector is often pretty bad at collaborating. It’s understandable in some ways; two private organisations come together to make money. It’s more complicated to get together to ‘make more good’, although a lot more important.
Being engaged with the National Citizen Service – in a very minor way – has been a useful experience, because it’s got us talking with a range of organisations who we’d like to work with in the future. This has happened because of tight deadlines and the need for consortium bids. It’s great for us to be getting the word out about our work. These links wouldn’t have been made without the Big Society.
On the other hand, tight deadlines sometimes lead to desperation. To some extent, you can see this happening with the National Citizen Service pilot deadlines. Ill-thought through partnerships, could easily lead to poor delivery. We’ll see.
And even if the Government can get the message across to people what the Big Society is, the speed at which they’re trying to prove it’s a good idea could undermine everything.
Motives
We need to cut UK spending – most of us are agreed on that . Obviously the rate at which we do it is up for debate, but it needs to happen.
This confuses the idea of the Big Society for many because they think it’s designed to save money. I think that’s a very big part of it, but also part of the Conservatives natural desire for a smaller state. What is worrying is when the first bit of that sentence is used to sneak in the second: cuts being used as a reason to do things that the Conservatives really want to do anyway.
The Government’s response to the Browne Review exemplifies this: it’s not just about creating more money for universities, it’s about fundamentally changing who pays for higher education in the UK. Somehow, they’ve got the Lib Dem’s fooled.
The Conservatives should be honest about their intentions, and this helps to undermine the idea of the Big Society for me.
Greg Sanderson
PS. Love to hear your thoughts using the comments below..
