Tag: Case study

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Making a great Student Voice conference even better – Part 1

Another year, another amazing Student Voice Conference at Little Heath School in Reading.

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.

Greg

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involver blog Student Voice Assistant's blog

Being a Student Voice Assistant

This is the first of a series of blog posts that we have asked Alison to write for us, to give us an insight into what it’s like to be employed as a Student Voice Assistant in your gap year and to keep us to up to date with what’s going on at a school that has excellent student voice practice and we love working with. We hope you find her experiences interesting and entertaining.

Asher and Greg

Hello all,

Welcome to my first blog! My name is Alison Seymour. I am 18 years old and last summer I completed my A levels at Little Heath School in Reading. I now work at the school as Student Voice Assistant and strange as it may have seemed at first, the staff room has now become like a second home. I have been asked to write a fortnightly blog for Involver and I am so excited to get started and share with you my experience of student voice.

Over my time as a student some of my roles included chairing the School Council and later our Student Voice Leaders, being on the Sixth Form Committee and also groups that focus on teaching and learning and how the buildings and physical structure of the school can be developed to enhance learning.

In my role as Student Voice Assistant, I now have the opportunity to work together with young people to allow them to experience and learn what I have. It is a privilege to see how they can develop and learn skills that can be used beyond their school career. Pupil voice and youth participation is an amazing way of allowing young people to make a difference. It might be in their school, local community or simply achieving a personal goal. That, in a nut shell, is what I believe to be central to pupil voice.

A really exciting part of my job is to plan our annual Student Voice Conference. This year it takes place on the 2nd February and, since being back from the Christmas holidays, much preparation has begun. We take 150 students out of school and spend the day doing different workshops and also have a question panel in the afternoon. It is an excellent opportunity to spend time with a variety of students discussing topics that are at the heart of school life.

This year the conference has three main strands. Our STARS (Students As ResearcherS) group will continue onto the next stage of their research. 40 students have spent the last year looking at different areas of teaching and learning, such as classroom environment, praise and reward and “what makes a good lesson?”, and how, we as a school, can celebrate success but also, improve these areas. The second strand is looking at Student Leadership and how we can develop a competency framework that allows students to be recognised for the ways that they show leadership. Thirdly, looking at student Rights and Responsibilities and how it feeds into a Language for Learning.

I am really excited to be a part of this day and am so interested to see the thoughts that the students have, because more often than not they are right on the money!

I’ll be back in two weeks! See you then :)

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Does a youth council have to look like a council?

Teddy bears at a meeting
I've never been to a meeting quite like this, but I have been to ones where everyone is as engaged as these inanimate objects.

A couple of weeks ago I was approached by the chair of the syanagogoue I attended when I was younger. She asked me to set up a youth council with a bunch of really enthusiastic young people who have just completed their Kabbalat Torah (a kind of confirmation – a furtherance of the Bar Mitzvah).

Now, these young people are able and committed, but not neccessarily committed to the idea of sitting in meetings, but really who is? My Dad’s still an active member of the synagogue, by which I mean he goes to a lot of meetings, sits on various committees, but does he find them interesting, of course not. They’re boring and cumbersome, but they do allow him to see many of the friends he has at synagogue and he gets to contribute to the way the community runs.

So, when the Chair asked me to set up a youth council, I checked with her that this was what the young people themselves said they wanted.

‘Well, they didn’t say that exactly, but they did say they wanted to give something back and keep in contact,’ was the reply.

‘And when you say you want them to be a ‘council’, do you want them to represent the views of the other young people?’ I went on.

‘I don’t know, I hadn’t really thought of that.’

So I thought to myself, ‘really, what would work here for everyone?’

I decided that of course I didn’t have the answer, that would come from meeting the young people and asking them.  So we arranged to meet one evening to discuss what interest they really had in this whole process.

We ate and chatted and discovered that they already did a lot for the synagogue, most of them volunteered as teaching assistants in the Cheder (Sunday School), one of them helped run the youth club and they’d all run a service together recently. What they really didn’t want was to feel like they were being dragged back to synagogue to eat up even more of their free time.

They were very keen though to have an excuse to get together and enjoy each other’s company and were happy to do that at the synagogue. They suggested getting together on a week night to cook for each other, eat and watch films on the synagogue’s big screen. They’re happy to organise something like this and thought that after the first one they’d invite the Chair and new Rabbi to attend for a bit to chat informally about what they wanted from (and wanted to put in to) the community.

They were happy too if the adults from the synagogue council wanted to ask them the odd question, that they might discuss over dinner and send back a response.

We discussed what would put them off coming and they resolved not to use those methods (including standing up in assembly to announce ‘an exciting new …’) to promote this event. They’re communicating with their peers in the ways that they like to communicate. I’m just on hand to offer support if they want it.

Is this exactly what the Chair expected? No, but I think in the end she’ll get a more committed, engaged group of young members, because they’re creating this experience for themselves, rather than having a structure imposed on them by adults.

Is this what the young people expected? Also not, I think they thought they’d go away with another person chasing them about coming to volunteer at another thing at the synagogue. What they got was an opportunity to keep up with their friends, and create something at the synagogue which they have ownership of, rather than just another thing they participate in.

When we’re setting up councils in schools, synagogues, churches, towns or wherever, what we want them to do is engage people in the way those communities run. So we need to set them up in a way that reflects that. Don’t make the method for engagement un-engaging, that makes sense, right?

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involver blog

School council training – get in touch!

Lots of schools are beginning to think about training their school council, or student voice groups, for next academic year.

If you want to make your student voice READY, then get in touch! You can read more about our training here.

It might be two days training to breathe new life into your tired school council, a staff INSET on student voice, or a half day workshop supporting students to be on an interview panel. Whatever it is, all of our training aims to make student voice:

Real, Everyone, Active, Democratic, Youth-led

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involver blog

School councils and student voice: why bother?

Hard work never killed anyone - but why take the chanceSchool councils. Student voice. Giving young people a say in how their school is run. Sounds like effort, doesn’t it? Kids are there to be educated, not to take part in it, right?

So why do so many schools bother with it? Because the Government says you have to listen to pupils? Because Ofsted might come and chat to your school council? Because some kids had a couple of good ideas and you might as well give it a go? Because some kids want to practice being politicians, and you need to give them a way to do that?

Let’s be clear : schools present a unique opportunity for young people to learn about democracy.

And let’s be double – clear: this opportunity is being missed by too many schools.

Student voice and school councils are often tokenistic. Young people are told that they have influence (but only the cleverest or most confident are allowed to use it), that they are listened to (as long as they give the right answer), and that they are free to talk about what they want (but can’t actually do anything to make things better).

Our approach is to help schools make the most of this opportunity, challenge tokenism, and help get more young people involved.

Very simply, we want young people to understand how their ideas can turn into actions which can turn into improvements for themselves and others. Learning democracy by ‘doing democracy’. Less sitting back and moaning about things, and more action!

Action Man poster
See what I did there?

I was working in Islamia Primary School in Brent yesterday, helping their new student voice team to plan for next year. One of the big ideas that came up was trying to get mirrors in the girls’ toilets. The girls’ headscarves were coming loose during the school day, and they had no mirrors to check if they were on properly. When they return from their summer break, the team plan to get going on this idea. They are six years old.

Now this might just be a few mirrors, but if young people can see how they can influence their lives and surroundings from a young age this plants important seeds. As they become secondary age students they will believe that they can take action and change things, and then university students will too.

Young people will find it more difficult to have the desire or to understand how they can change things in adult life if they’ve had no practice! Or if they’ve been kept in a simulated democratic world where they are ‘listened to’ but never have the experience of negotiating, collaborating and struggling to achieve their own, shared aims.

And this should never be just about training the next generation of politicians – if you know how to ‘plan’, ‘do’ and ‘reflect’ a project with a group of people, that is useful whatever you choose to do in life.

It’s also very important that schools connect learning about the same concepts. We’re all agreed that democracy and empowerment are important concepts, right?

So let’s use every opportunity we can to connect what we can learn about in the news, in the curriculum, with what we do in student voice. It’s about connecting what others do, with what we do.

Let’s reflect on MPs expenses, by talking about school councillor expenses; let’s discuss the coalition government by talking about how easy it is to decide things by committee; let’s think about the civil rights movement and suffragettes when planning a student voice election. We grasp things best when we understand them from different angles.

Barack Obama

Not seeing these links can undermine everything. You might be less inspired about by Barack Obama’s democratic journey if your ‘democratic’ school council is just the ten brightest pupils, picked by the head teacher!

So let’s be clear: a healthy democracy needs curious, active people. A healthy democracy needs healthy democratic education, and schools are central to that.

Let’s not be complacent.

Greg

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involver blog

Raising achievement through student voice and data

I just read this really interesting article on how schools in Colorado are finding that in the quest to raise standards and achievement that data alone is a blunt tool; student voice sharpens this.

Their recommendations are excellent, especially:

Utilize student-led outreach to capture feedback from disengaged students.

Have a read: http://blog.ednewscolorado.org/2010/01/05/in-r2t-student-voice-will-sharpen-blunt-instruments/