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Out of the toilet and in to the classroom

Working with primary school councils in Oldham and Haringey over the last two days I ran in to the same issue that so many schools and their councils struggle with: can we get beyond talking about the toilets?

The simple suggestion I gave to them is to split their School Council in to Action Teams. This ensures that their school councils look beyond the physical and start to deal with all the things that are going on in their schools. We find these Action Teams cover most aspects of what goes on in school:

Learning

Learning
  • Helping everyone to enjoy learning
  • Trips
  • Bringing people in to the school
  • What happens in class

Relationships

Relationships
  • Helping people have fun
  • Stopping bullying
  • Making school friendly

Fundraising & Events

Fundraising
  • Finding out what needs money
  • Making money
  • Putting on competitions, shows and special days

Environment

Environment
  • Saving energy
  • Recycling
  • Making sure the school looks good
  • Getting fun equipment

Communication

Communication
  • Letting people know what’s going on
  • Getting ideas
  • Assemblies
  • Website
  • Noticeboard

If you just want to have four Action Teams you could miss out Communication, but then you need to make sure all other groups share responsibility for this and report back on their communication each time.

So all items brought up from class council meetings, suggestion boxes, from the school council blog, etc. get allocated to the most appropriate Action Team by the Chair and Secretary (with support from the Link Teacher if they need it). The Action Teams then need to meet to discuss those issues and figure out which ones they can take action on (if nothing has been suggested for an Action Team, they need to seek something out). These actions are then what is taken to the full School Council meeting for ratification. You could fit in this extra meeting by replacing every other School Council meeting with Action Team meetings or by having the Action Team meetings for the first third or half of the time allocated for the School Council meeting.

The school council meeting becomes a way to co-ordinate all the pupil-led activities and to check that no actions will adversely affect any pupils. So it has a standing agenda of:

Item Person Time
1 Apologies (from people who can’t make the meeting) Secretary 1 min
2 Check last meeting’s minutes (to make sure they’re correct) Chair 2 mins
3 Learning Action Team

  • Report on actions from last time (matters arising)
  • What we are going to do this time (for agreement)
LAT Chair 5 mins
4 Relationships Action Team

  • Report on actions from last time (matters arising)
  • What we are going to do this time (for agreement)
RAT Chair 5 mins
5 Fundraising and Events Action Team

  • Report on actions from last time (matters arising)
  • What we are going to do this time (for agreement)
FaEAT Chair 5 mins
6 Environment Action Team

  • Report on actions from last time (matters arising)
  • What we are going to do this time (for agreement)
EAT Chair 5 mins
7 Communication Action Team

  • Report on actions from last time (matters arising)
  • What we are going to do this time (for agreement)
CAT Chair 5 mins
8 Any other business (A.O.B.) Chair 2 mins
9 Date of next meeting Secretary 1 min

This way the meetings should be focussed on action, should discuss more than just what colour to paint the toilets and be quicker – as the reports are not for in-depth discussion, just for ratification.

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Citizenship involver blog

Pathways Through Participation: lessons for schools

The excellent Pathways Through Participation project has just published its final reports (in summary and full detail). They’re really worth a read for anyone looking to improve participation in schools. Whilst their focus was on adults – what gets them in to active citizenship, what keeps them involved – the lessons they’ve drawn from it hold true for young people too.

I particularly liked these simple equations:

Why participation starts, continues or stops
Participation equations from Pathways Through Participation: Why participation starts, continues and stops.

It’s vital to remember that in a community as diverse as a school the motivations and triggers will need to be many and varied to engage a wide variety of students. Just having a school council isn’t enough. A school council that sees its role as ‘involvers‘ – as people whose job it it is to figure out what would involve other students – would be a great start. The role of the staff then is to add in the other part of the equation, creating opportunities and ensuring the resources are in place for students to take advantage of them.

Pathways Through Participation is a project of Involve (who are friends of ours, but we’re not related), the NCVO and the Institute for Volunteering Research. It was funded by the Big Lottery Fund.

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involver blog

Student Leadership Teams: is this the real student voice?

As the new school year starts you might be thinking about how to give student voice in your school the kick up the bum is desperately needs. Last year’s school council was a bit of a washout, wasn’t it? There was a lot of moaning, a fair bit of grumbling, that one idea that didn’t quite come off and then a whole load of prevarication.

If only the kids on the school council weren’t that negative, feckless bunch. It would all have been different if you’d had the school’s elite, the committed, quick-witted, leaders of the student body driving things forward.

So how do we get them involved?

How about creating positions with cachet, status and a rigorous process of selection? We’ll have advertisements, interviews, regular meetings and a place in the School Development Plan. We’ll call it the Student Leadership Team and give them all titles mirroring the Senior Leadership Team to show how seriously we’re taking them.

Now we’ve got a strong, confident student voice speaking directly to every department and to the SeniorLT. Sorted.

I’ve seen that thought process in many schools but I think it fundamentally misses the point of student voice. There are four reasons why schools need a strong student voice:

  1. Learning:
    • Skills: giving students the chance to learn skills of team work, negotiation, communication and project management.
    • Citizenship: for students to learn, through experience, about their responsibilities to create the community they want to be part of and what a democracy is, its potential, limitations and inherent compromises.
  2. ‘Well-being’: giving students constructive alternative routes to resolve problems and raise personal concerns.
  3. Evaluation: collecting the views of the school ‘users’ to see how they feel the school is performing.
  4. Obligation: the UNCRC requires that young people have some say in decisions that affect them. In Wales school have to have a school council and whilst legislation in the rest of the UK doesn’t require it, it strongly suggest that it should be happening.

So which of these does StuLT miss? Well, probably all of them if it is constructed as suggested above. The key element that’s missing is universality. If the reasons for student voice that I have given are valid it’s important that all students are involved in student voice. Choosing those who already do well and give staff the kinds of answers they want to hear does little for the majority of students. It also undermines your evaluation and attempts to meet your obligations.

So, am I against StuLTs? No, I think they can be a great way of tying students in to the decision-making processes in schools, but they need to be built on the democratic structures that exist (such as class and school councils), not undermine or replace them. The ideas about cachet, status, rigorous selection, etc. could – no, should – be applied to the school council. Make your election process demanding and informative. Get each member of the school council to take on a role on the StuLT. Impress on those standing the importance of their role.

StuLTs need to be considered as part of a whole school student voice plan. A plan with students, not the school, at its heart. A plan built around learning not school improvement. So every student gains the learning and well-being on offer, and all of their views form part of the school’s self-evaluation. School improvement will naturally grow from this.

So when you’re trying to redesign student voice in your school think about it as an educator, not an administrator. Start with these two questions and build from there:

  • What do I want it to teach students about the world?
  • Which students do I want to learn this?

 

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Citizenship involver blog News

School council elections: compilation of free resources

It’s the beginning of the school term.

Loads of school council elections are taking place across the country, but many of them aren’t organised as well as they could be. 

Often this is perfectly understandable; running the election is sometimes thrust upon an unsuspecting teacher, so here’s a complication of the resources we’ve got to help you out!

1. A set of 15 minute short tutor time activities to help plan a school council election:

http://involver.org.uk/2011/03/school-council-election-tutor-form-time-activities

2. Practical steps on running a school council election, setting it up and questions about if you REALLY need to have one:

http://involver.org.uk/2010/08/school-council-elections-planning-for-success/

3. Our school council reps toolkit might help students understand what’s involved as a school councillor (sometimes if they’re not sure what’s involved, they won’t put themselves forward).

http://involver.org.uk/2010/10/school-council-reps-tookit/

4. It’s important to have a think about what type of school council model (and therefore election) you need to have:

http://involver.org.uk/2011/07/school-councils-and-democracy-pick-your-model-carefully/

5. Once you’ve got your reps, then use this ‘getting to know your reps’ game:

http://involver.org.uk/2009/09/getting-to-know-your-reps-game-template/

6. Try and avoid this!

http://involver.org.uk/2009/09/school-council-election-fraud-as-it-happens/

And remember, you can always email us if you want some help or advice. Or feel free to suggest a new election resource for us to write.

Greg

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School councils – welcome back!

Hello everyone,

Welcome back to school. Hope you all had a fun summer!

To give you a quick  idea of what we’ve been up to…..

In between lovely holidays to Loch Ness, Aberdeen, Rugby and France, we’ve been doing lots of work on the Smart School Council Community, a charity we’re setting up and supporting.

It’s led by fifteen founding schools who we know have AMAZING student voice/school councils. Any young person, teacher or governor can join for FREE and get some help (or help others) with your school council. Good deal, right?

Head over to www.smartschoolcouncils.org.uk to get involved.

As a social enterprise based in Tottenham, we’ve been busy helping out after the riots. As well as donating and sorting clothes, Asher’s been writing about the subject and also been on the radio talking about it.  That second link features a hilarious picture of him.

Related to these events, and the questions about education and engagement in the UK today, we’re working on an exciting new film project with the Carib Theatre Company and Franklyn Lane Productions. We’ll keep you posted.

 We also had a great time at the UKYP Annual SittingLOADS of really engaged young people who are a credit to their areas and the UKYP too. Here’s Asher next to our stand:

And here’s our map where you could rate your school council:


Finally, don’t forget that you can get us in to do some training in your school or cluster of schools.

We’ve got lots of training booked, including trips to the Republic of Ireland and the Czech Republic.

Importantly, we’re working with many  local schools in Tottenham as part of the Smart School Council Community too.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for lots of useful advice and blogs!

Greg

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involver blog

Riots, discipline and student voice

I was involved in a short debate on BBC WM’s breakfast show this Monday. I was put up against Nick Seaton from the Campaign for Real Education, who campaigns against progressive education.

Have a listen and see what you think:

As with any interview like this no one gets the time they want to put across all the points they’d like to, but I hope I managed to get across: you don’t change people’s behaviour by repeating the rule, you change behaviour by getting them to understand the reasoning behind it.

The detail of what I was trying to say is best expressed in my post from last week: Old fashioned discipline is not what rioters needed