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Tag: 14-19
For the fourth in our series of school council case studies, it’s Beauchamp College, which is a Key Stage 4 and Post-16 college.
Key quote:
“College is a cultural mixing pot, so it’s impossible to say ‘this is what The Students want’, student voice enables teachers to be aware of the huge variety of wants and needs.”
Student governor
Key benefits:
The culture of ‘high respect’ goes hand in hand with ‘high discipline’. There are no bells or uniforms and also no detentions. Students are expected to be responsible, treated as though they can be and so they are.
Staff and students all buy in to and contribute to school improvement: “Staff are with student voice, the school is not for teachers to teach and students to listen; students help the school progress.”
Student-led clubs and societies give every student the opportunity to lead, whilst greatly broadening the range of extra-curricular activities for everyone. This requires minimal staff support.
Students are very clear of the skills they are learning through being representatives, leaders and active participants in their school. They link these directly to the roles they want to take on in later life, both in employment and in wider society.
Top advice:
- “Start small, let it grow and learn from other schools.” Student governor
- “It’s not necessarily the loudest or most confident students who have the best ideas. Student voice is every student’s view, not just the ‘leaders’ in the school. All roles should be important, it is not to do with how many ‘leaders’ there are.” Student governor
- “Communicate and be diverse. If you are the ‘same old, same old’ people, people will not be interested. Give it creativity and glamour. Find different ways to talk.” Student governor
- “Student voice is about being in the community, not just the school: connecting students and the school with what’s going on outside.” Student ambassador
- “Engrain things from a young age, so people know how to use their voice.” Student ambassador
- Beauchamp shows how it values student voice by creating professional-looking posters of all the representatives and teams and the things they’ve been doing. These are displayed all over the college.
Methods used:
Student governors
Rather than a school council the top-level student representation at Beauchamp is a group of four student governors from Year 13 (they are elected while they are in Year 12). This structure was suggested by a student five years ago and has been running since then. Student governors are elected by students from across the whole-school. Any student is able to stand; they realise it will be a significant commitment of time but that their potential to make an impact on the college is equally significant. Their role is to represent the views of all students to the college’s management and to co-ordinate and initiate many of the student-led projects.
The student governors meet with the vice-principal every Monday morning for an hour and a half to catch up with what each other are doing and what the school is working on. Any other student or member of staff can also attend these meetings to comment on issues being discussed or bring up new ones. Students can also get their views to the student governors through their Facebook page, suggestion box or by seeing them in their office. The student governors also attend all meetings of the full governing body – as associate governors – and are given voting rights when they turn 18. Having students as associate governors is a possibility open to all schools.
Student ambassador
The student ambassador is a new role at Beauchamp College. This is an appointed post, rather than elected. The student ambassador’s job is to create links between the student body and the local community. He has been working on representation at the local youth council as well as inter-generational schemes with the local elderly.
The student ambassador sees his role as giving a greater number of students the opportunity and encouragement to become involved in making a contribution to the school and wider community. He has set out to do this in a creative way to add to the avenues for student voice and leadership offered through student governors, INSTED, etc.
‘INSTED’
Like the student governors, INSTED was suggested by a student. It is an internal evaluation of teaching and learning led by a student team that has been running for four years. Places on the team are advertised annually and anyone can apply. Everyone who applies to take part can do so. They are trained by a member of staff who is also an ex-Ofsted inspector, who co-ordinates and supports the INSTED team.
The aims of INSTED are to:
- Celebrate the positive aspects of teaching and learning;
- Suggest areas for improvement and constructively help the college to move forward to be the best.
The INSTED team do this through lesson observations and discussions with staff and students; these follow a set format developed by the school. The results of these are compiled in to reports by a student co-ordinator. This is given to the teacher concerned and to the head of department.
The scheme is seen as a huge success with students being able to see the impact they are having in the classroom and teachers requesting INSTED observations as they see it as a way to push forward their own practice.
Students appointing staff
Students are heavily involved in all staff appointments at Beauchamp, including the appointment of the new principal. Where they have gone further than most schools is that they have completely managed the appointment of a member of staff. The job description and person specification of the Key Stage 5 manager, a pastoral role, was written by students; they advertised the post, managed the interviews and made the appointment. It was felt that as the role was primarily working for the students then the students should make the appointment. The process gave the students a real insight in to what goes into recruitment and the college is very happy with the appointment made.
In the recent process of appointing a new principal, students were present at all stages or the 2 week process, bar one interview.
Student-led clubs and societies
The college has a system whereby students can apply to set up and run clubs and societies, like in many university student unions. This not only greatly increases the number and range of extra-curricular activities the college can run, but provides a great number of leadership opportunities for students. The sense of ownership and responsibility this gives to students means that minimal staff support and supervision is needed.
These clubs and societies can come from any aspect of students’ lives, covering religious, sporting, cultural, philosophical and creative interests.
Student-led research
This offers all students the opportunity to become involved in research. Students are encouraged to choose an area which is of particular interest to them but is also in some way linked to the college’s corporate plan. All students who join the programme initially attend a seminar at a university campus in order for them to experience a taste of university life as well as learning the rudiments of carrying out a research project. Students can work individually or as a team and are allocated a mentor who supports and guides them throughout the process. There are currently over 40 students involved in the programme.
Students present their recommendations to the college leadership team once their data is collected and analysed. As students frequently tackle these projects from a different perspective to staff, their observations are of particular interest and regularly student proposals are both innovative and thought provoking.
About the school (adapted from Ofsted):
Beauchamp is a coeducational comprehensive 14-19yrs Upper School, with approximately 2150 students. It was formerly an old-established grammar school in Kibworth dating back 600 years. It is currently situated on the southern outskirts of Leicester city, in an area considered to be relatively affluent.
The Sixth Form is one of the country’s largest, with over one thousand of the college’s 2150 students enrolled. 58 per cent of all students are from ethnic minority backgrounds, including 39 per cent Indian, 6 per cent Asian and 13 per cent mixed, producing a rich and diverse centre of learning for students. 32 per cent of students have a first language other than English. The college has about one third of the national average proportion of students with learning difficulties and/ or disabilities. However the proportion of students with a statement of SEN is about average.
Beauchamp consistently achieves above the national average GCSE and A Level results and ‘outstanding’ Sixth Form Ofsted reports. Amongst its other achievements Beauchamp is an International School, with Leading Edge and Training School status. The college gained technology specialist status in 1996 and gained a second specialism in vocational education in 2006.
Involver conducted these case studies for the Office of the Children’s Commissioner in 2011, as part of a project to encourage schools to involve their students in decision making
These are a few ideas for how you can run discussions in your school or class council meetings. In fact you could use them in any meeting really.
| Method | Good for | Be aware of |
|---|---|---|
| Yes/No/Maybe – designate a different area of the room for each answer. Ask the question and get people to stand in the area that represents their answer. Ask people to explain their reasoning and persuade others.
A more sophisticated version is an ‘opinion line’ where participants place themselves along a line to show how strongly they agree/disagree with something. A further level of sophistication is to make a graph with 2 axes (e.g. difficulty vs importance or agree vs care). |
Getting people out of their seats.
Pushing people to explain their reasoning. Getting different people talking. Being a physical demonstration of changing opinion and persuasion. |
Peer pressure: people not wanting to stand on their own. You can often avoid this by starting with trivial questions and supporting and praising those who do stand on their own. |
| Passing the ‘conch’ – an object is passed around and only the person with that object can speak.
Different rules can be applied: e.g. when you have the ‘conch’ you have to speak; the ‘conch’ has to be passed round the circle; the ‘conch’ can be passed to anyone you like; the conch only goes to those demonstrating good listening. |
Stopping interrupting: it gives a very clear signal of who is supposed to be speaking.
Can help quieter people to speak, because they know they won’t be interrupted and/or they are required to. |
The ‘conch’ becoming a distraction.
Meetings becoming slow if there is no Chair to pass the ‘conch’ on. |
| Small groups – set the question and then split the class in to small groups (3-6). Ask them to discuss it and come up with one answer that they can all agree on. Have one person from each group give their group’s answer and reasoning. | Allows everyone to have a say without taking too long.
Encourages compromise within the small group. |
One person dominating a small group.
If all the small groups come up with different answers coming to a conclusion may need further discussions. |
| Losing your marbles – give each person 3 marbles. When someone speaks they have to hand over a marble, so once they’ve contributed three times they need to stay quiet. You can also turn this round and say by the end of the meeting everyone needs to have lost all of their marbles. | Making sure the meeting isn’t dominated by a few people.
Encouraging people to consider what is really important for them to contribute to. Keeping track of who contributes and who doesn’t. |
Having everyone run out of marbles before the end – you need to make sure everyone knows what is coming up, so they can plan when to use a marble. |
What methods do you use to liven up your meetings and ensure that everyone gets a say?
This is a great little session to do at the beginning of the year when you’re trying to figure out what you want your school council (or student voice more broadly) to get involved with.
I think it works particularly well when you have groups of staff and students in the same room and then get them to look at one another’s lists at the end.
- Download these cards and cut them up (each group needs one set): [download id=”238″]
- Split people into small groups. If working with pupils and staff together have separate staff and pupil groups.
- Get them to sort the cards as a group, discussing each one briefly as they go.
- You can ask different groups to do:
- As it is now
- How they think it should be
- How they think pupils/staff want it to be (whichever they aren’t)
- Get the groups to look at one another’s cards and discuss any differences or surprises.
You can do this is a short session (15 minutes) but if often provokes quite a lot of debate, so it can easily stretch to 45 (15 minutes sorting and 30 discusing).
The new framework for school inspections released by Ofsted today removes all pressure on schools to involve their students in self-evaluation and improving their own community.
When schools are being blamed for not connecting young people with their communities, a key tool that helped young people to see that their communities are what they make them, not something that happens to them, has been swept away.
Under the previous Ofsted framework student voice (and thereby the importance of students to the school community) was emphasised in three ways:
- Schools had to show in their Self-Evaluations Forms (SEFs) how they had engaged with and listened to students as part of their on-going strive to improve.
- Ofsted inspectors met with students who had been elected by their peers as their representatives (the school council).
- Ofsted wrote a clear, simple letter direct to students (via the school council) explaining the key findings of their inspection.*
All of these have disappeared.
All of them showed students that they had a stake in the school and their own education, they were not just raw material with which good teachers would make good grades and bad teachers would make bad grades.
Now it has been pointed out to me that good schools will do this anyway and I’m sure they will because they’ve seen the benefits, but it’s about getting those other schools to try it so they also see the benefits. Showcasing and sharing good practice is important but it can never provide the same impetus for schools that feel too nervous or busy to try things that the carrot/stick of an Ofsted grading can.
Once schools do get over that first hurdle they see how teaching and learning can be improved, how pupils’ self-confidence and communication skills grow and how pupils come to have a greater respect for a community they feel respects them. One of the most positive things Ofsted did was help schools take that first step. I fear that the new Ofsted framework will further widen the gap between those students who feel their community listens to them and those who don’t. We will end up with schools that produce young people with high grades but no skills with which to apply them. No understanding of teamwork, compromise, respect or self-determination. That’s not to say that the schools that do actively encourage students to express their views, collaborate and be critical thinkers won’t also get high grades, far from it, but their students will have so much more on top of the grades.
So what could Ofsted do? Well, given that they’re not going to reinstate the SEF, they should at least do numbers 2 and 3 above. They should extend to students the system that they will be releasing in October for surveying parents; this will give a much more complete and detailed picture (as staff and governors will be spoken to directly). They also need to define far more carefully what they mean by ‘take account of the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of pupils when judging the overall effectiveness of the school’. But if they don’t act fast I think we will see a still nascent area of learning, student voice, disappear in many schools and with it any constructive way for many students to feedback on, engage with and improve their schools.
* This was also published online and I bet it was pretty useful to many parents too, as it was much easier to read than the formulaic, lengthy and jargon-heavy main reports. Have a look for yourself (the letter to the pupils is at the bottom): Welbourne Primary School Ofsted Report 2009
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:
- 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.
- ‘Well-being’: giving students constructive alternative routes to resolve problems and raise personal concerns.
- Evaluation: collecting the views of the school ‘users’ to see how they feel the school is performing.
- 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?