Here’s a few tips on how to plan successful elections for your school council:
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Category: Resources
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?
I posted yesterday about a number of student voice ideas and issues that came up at a training session I ran recently. It seemed a bit remiss to leave those issues just hanging there, we are in the business of (helping you) solve those kinds of problems after all. Luckily I took some photos last week at the training I ran for Wolverhampton’s primary school council co-ordinators where we were looking at what solutions they might use for just some of these problems.
Apologies for the rather garish colours but they actually make the images more readable (honestly). If any of them are too small to read, click on them and you’ll be able to see a larger version. These are the issues we looked at:
- What can we do if our meetings have gone flat?
- What can I do if I’m not getting the support I need from senior staff (e.g. given time and resources to run things)?
- Things have gone well this year, how do we make sure we don’t lose that?
- What can we do if class teachers don’t give reps time to feedback?
- The people on the school council aren’t great at getting things done, what can we do?
- What can I do if other staff in the school don’t give the school council the importance it deserves/needs?
Just before half term I ran a training course for ASCL (the Association of School and College Leaders), as part of this we collected together a wide variety of student voice activities that the participants had come across. We also highlighted a number of issues that could come up in trying to implement these schemes.
I thought this was a great collection so I’m sharing them with you here. Please add any other ideas in the comments and I’ll add them to the mindmap.
To see the whole mindmap (it’s pretty large) click on 
(in the middle at the top), this will collapse all the levels. Then click on the little plus signs on each ‘node’ to expand it. The whole map can be dragged around too. (If this is just too complicated there’s a list version underneath)
[iframe http://mind42.com/pub/mindmap?mid=ca7480b6-1c1e-4967-9747-f328bb4b3b09 100% 500px]
To see the whole mindmap (it’s pretty large) click on (in the middle at the top), this will collapse all the levels. Then click on the little plus signs on each ‘node’ to expand it. The whole map can be dragged around too. (If this is just too complicated there’s a list version underneath)
Student Voice Ideas and Issues
- + –
Behaviour- + –
Support- Conflict resolution
- Target setting
- Buddies
- + –
Monitoring/enforcement- Student Panel
- Prefect System
- Prefect system based on school council
- ‘Self Government’ responsible for rules
- + –
Policy-making- Code of Conduct
- Setting class groundrules
- Linking local community to school council to deal with after school issues
- Head boy/girl oversee prefect system
- Rewards and sanctions group
- + –
- + –
Issues- + –
Due to structure- Involving all students
- Power
- Money
- Time
- Influence
- Succession
- + –
Fears- Is it democratic?
- Censorship required?
- Getting a representative group
- Getting responses completed and handed back
- Pleasing everyone
- Unsupportive colleagues
- + –
Individuals’ ability- + –
Lack of training- Staff
- Students
- Making decsions
- Planning issues
- Confidentiality
- Realistic/appropriate ideas
- + –
- + –
Perception issues- Seen negatively by other students
- Pupils not on council/identified by badges, ties, etc. might feel they have less influence
- Getting people to recognise the importance
- + –
- + –
Teaching and Learning- Pupil interview panels
- Students to reseacrh attitudes to learning
- + –
Peer support- Peer assessment
- Peer mentoring
- Peer tutoring (reluctant readers)
- Student academic mentors
- + –
Formal student evaluation- Student SEF
- Faculty reviews
- Insted (student Ofsted)
- Lesson observations by student council
- Reviews
- Student observers
- Students observing rooms focussing on noticeboards and levelled work
- + –
Informal student evaluation- Learning walks
- Discussion on T&L
- + –
Student planning and teaching- Students teaching G&T lessons
- Numeracy, literacy and sports leaders
- Curriculum planning
- Ambassadors for different subject areas
- Sports ambassadors
- + –
Environment- + –
Eco- + –
Reducing carbon footprint- Students approached governors and got £500 to kick off project
- Campaign to use both sides of paper in ICT
- + –
Eco council- Huge electricity bill
- School eco bag
- Sustainability
- Recycled stationery shop
- Eco bags competition
- + –
- + –
Built environment- Surveys
- Students designing toilets in BSF
- Changing the building
- Environmental group (outside spaces)
- + –
School environment- Sub-committees
- New uniform put in place by school council
- School improvement
- House leaders recognised through their tie and jumpers
- Fund raising for school council to meet objectives
- + –
- + –
Relationships- Appointments
- + –
Leaders wristbands- Community
- Befriender
- Attender
- + –
Fund raising activities- Enterprise
- Anti-bullying (FAB)
- Good Citizenship Awards
- + –
Peer mentoring- Bullying
- Advisors
- Student website
- Council target setting using SMART targets to measure success
- Creating a handbook for new migrant students
- + –
Other- Attending governors meetings
- Student-led magazine
- Tour guides
- Representing the school at events
- Students helping with SEF
- Decorating toilets
- Participatory budgeting
- Student leadership
- + –
Major officials system- 1 vote per member of school
- + –
Charity decisions- Fund raising
- + –
Policy discussion- + –
Anti-racism policy- How staff should deal with racism in class
- + –
- Pupils running enrichment activities
- + –
Whole school celebrations- Black history month
- E-safety
- Uniform changes
- Assemblies
- School council
- + –
Anti-smoking campaign- Patches
Over the last couple of days a motion being discussed at the NASUWT (National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teachers) to strike over increasing student voice has sparked a number of alarmist articles across the press. (Click here for our formal response).
Essentially they pull out a few examples of bad or questionable practice of involving pupils in the interview process and from there draw the conclusion that pupils shouldn’t be listened to. So the NASUWT has found a few examples of where schools appear to have managed the process badly and so want to ban the process completely. I’m suggesting a different approach: get schools to manage the process well.
I’ve worked in many schools where they’ve found the process invaluable because pupils give them a different perspective on the candidates. Most of them use a process something like this:
- Governors decide on your interview process, how the day will be run and what role pupils will play in this (bearing in mind that any decision of who to employ is ultimately down to the governors).
- Write down the process and responsibilities and share with all involved, including pupils and prospective candidates (i.e. put it in the application pack).
- Get together a representative group of pupils, explain the process to them, including how much weight their views will be given. This maybe your school council or a group s/elected for this purpose, but here we’ll assume it’s the school council.
- Get the school council members to go to other classes in the school (how many depends on the role being applied for, for a Head you may want them to go to all classes):
- Discuss, ‘what makes a good Head/Deputy/Teacher/etc.?’
- Each class should decide on the top 3 qualities/skills.
- These should be recorded by the school council representative.
- The school council should be given training on:
- Confidentiality
- Active listening
- Open v. Closed questions
- Leading questions
- Questions candidates might ask
- The school council then discusses:
- What the other pupils have said makes a good Head/Deputy/Teacher/etc.?
- They choose the most important of these.
- What questions would you ask to find out if someone had each of these?
- What sort of answers would be good or bad?
- This list of questions is then drawn up along with a marking sheet for each of the questions/qualities.
- Setting up the pupil panel:
- The pupil panel is separate to the adult panel (ideally there should be no other adults in the room, where safeguarding good practice allows).
- One student is nominated as the chair.
- The pupil panel is not a ‘weeding out’ stage.
- Candidates are encouraged to ask the pupil panel questions to ensure this is a two-way process.
- As in formal interviews each candidate is asked the same set of questions. Each member of the pupil panel writes comments and marks on their marking sheet. After each candidate has left pupils discuss them and come to a joint conclusion. These are written down and passed to the adult interview panel.
- The pupil panel meets with the adult interview panel so the adult panel can ask for clarification or explanation of the pupil panel’s findings.
- The adult interview panel makes the decision on who to appoint. Giving whatever weight to the pupil’s views they feel it merits. If they wish to they can question the pupil panel on how they arrived at their decision.
- The application process is evaluated so that it can be improved for next time:
- Discussion with school council about how it went: did they ask the right types of questions; did they get the kinds of answers they were expecting, etc.?
- Where possible, discussion with candidates about how they felt about the process.
The benefits you’ll get from involving pupils in the interview process:
- A wider variety of perspectives on candidates.
- Candidates get a different view on the school.
- Pupils learn something about what makes a good teacher (and how hard it is to be one).
- You might learn something about what pupils value in a good teacher (I’ve never once seen the answer, ‘a pushover’).
- Pupils learn about how interviews work, useful knowledge when entering the work force.
- A good starting point for relationships between pupils and a new teacher.
- It says that your school has pupils as its focus and that’s what you expect of your staff too.
And here are a few other people’s views on the benefits of pupils’ involvement in the interview process:
From staff and pupils: BBC News
From another governor (I mean other than me): Jaynehowarth’s Weblog
From Headteachers and another teaching union: ASCL (Association of School and College Leaders)
So, please don’t throw the baby out with the bath water, just improve the processes and training around involving pupils.
The Albion High School in Salford (Manchester) had a problem with its school council, as in many schools it was seen as ineffective and so became very unpopular with students. Staff and governors set improving pupil voice as a key priority for the school. With help from Creative Partnerships they have rebranded and reconstituted the school council, which is now known as REGENERATE. It has a significant budget (£30,000) and members of the Senior Leadership Team (SLT) provide direct support.
Having trained a number of Salford school council co-ordinators the other week I was invited to help run REGENERATE’s training yesterday – I was even billed as “Asher Jacobsberg: National Leader on Student Voice and Involvement” which was a bit of an ego massage! The day was opened by the Chair of Governors and the Headteacher, which I feel was really important for them and the students, really creating a link between the key decision-making bodies in the school. My role for the day, as well as running ice-breakers and rounding the day off, was to help the students decide on a strategy for getting the whole-school involved with REGENERATE. For me this always comes down to communication. The best way to start to pique people’s interest is to tell them about what you’re already doing, and encourage them to tell you what they think. Once that’s working, then they’re much more likely to want to move in to taking an active role.
So this is the session I ran with them, and we came up with a really solid communication plan at the end of it. Very importantly each element had someone who would be responsible for it, and a regular date on which it would happen. Some of the ideas that the students came up with and will be taking forward:
- Visit primary schools to tell them about REGENERATE, show they will be listened to at The Albion and find out what they want The Albion to be like when they get there.
- Use social networking sites to spread the word about what REGENERATE is up to.
- Create a REGENERATE jingle for the radio show that they will be recording.
- Make sure that the REGENERATE noticeboards are updated after every meeting, that they are in places where everyone in the school will see them and that they are funny and interesting to look at!
Download the session plan as a Word 2007 .docx file (192 KB)
Download the session plan as a Word 2003 .doc file (225 KB)
To download as a PDF use the link in the Scribd window below.