Tag: class council

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Getting class council meetings to work

Involving the whole school

The key issue for school councils is how they involve the whole student body. Not just once a year when representatives are voted on, but on an on-going basis, throughout the year.

For me the core of the answer is in class meetings. Through these every student in the school can be listened to, given a chance to speak and become involved. Not all will want to, and many won’t very often, but the fact that it happens regularly, for everyone makes a huge difference. It is clear that the school (and the school council) are there for you when you need it, and is actively trying to involve you.

Transferring responsibility in secondaries

In secondary schools having these meetings is often seen to be harder than in primaries. The timetable is more prescribed, students move around and swap groups during the day, and so on. Last week when this issue arose at a training session I asked about the class meetings in the teacher’s school. He said that they had got rid of them because they couldn’t rely on the 72 form tutors to run them and pass on the messages. I’ve heard this from so many schools and it makes me sad to think about what this says to the students about how much their form tutors value their opinions. It raises questions of management too, but we’ll leave that to another time.

To me it seems that this is a problem that could be avoided. This shouldn’t be the teachers’ responsibility, it should be the class reps’.  They should each have a simple page to assist them to run a class meeting. It lists decisions made, questions to be asked and a space for raising new issues. This makes sure that every class in the school is involved in the discussions of the school council. All the teacher needs to do is ensure that every other Friday 15 minutes of form time is given over to the class rep (as stated in the school council policy).

So I suggested this to the delegates at the training event. They liked the idea and of course asked whether I had a template for this. “Of course,” I white-lied, “I’ll send it out to you all next week.” So this morning I transferred that template from my head to the computer.

Free template

You can download a PDF or a Word version below. There are instructions for the class rep on the sheet itself. Instructions on how to fill it out are at the bottom of this page.

[gview file=”http://involver.org.uk/dl/class-meeting-feedback-form.pdf” save=”0″]

[download id=”250″]

[download id=”251″]

Instructions for filling it out

I would suggest you take the Word version and then you can type directly in to it. This is how it needs to be filled out (I say ‘school council’ below but it could be any meeting that is being reported back from, such as a year or house council):

  1. In Section 1 you should put the decisions that were taken at the school council. Keep it succinct but clear, as the rep will just read this section out.
  2. You should just be able to copy the ‘Issue’ from your minutes.
  3. The ‘Action/Decision’ should also be from your minutes, so wherever possible it should be an action: WHO is going to do WHAT by WHEN.
  4. The ‘Reason’ is where you can add some explanation. For example, ‘There was general agreement on this from across the school’; ‘There isn’t the money to do this at this time’
  5. In Section 2 you should write the question that the school council wants to ask the whole school. Make the question clear and simple, so you are sure everyone across the school understands it as written.
  6. Depending on the question, you may find it useful to add some options for classes to select from.
  7. You should leave section 3 blank, this is where ideas from the classes are written down.

You then need a system for collecting and collating these sheets. It could be that they are all handed in to the office straight after form time to be collected by the school council secretary later.

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Involving very young children in pupil voice

The previous two ideas have suggested a couple of ways to improve how meetings are chaired and broaden the scope of issues that meetings cover. But how do you involve the youngest children in your school? Sitting them in a meeting, no matter how well run, can be difficult. Here’s a way to get them involved and learning how to participate.

The issue

Including Reception and KS1 (children aged 4-7) in school council meetings is difficult for them and everyone else.

The suggestion

Rather than having children of this age in meetings ask teachers in their classes to set aside 15-20 minutes per week when members of the school council can come and ask them a question. This is how it would then work:

  1. School council decides on one question to ask Reception and KS1 on an issue that directly involves them. This same question will be asked to all Reception and KS1 classes.
  2. Just before the allotted time Reception and KS1 teachers should organise their classes into groups of 3-5.
  3. Two members of the school council go to each Reception and KS1 class to introduce the question and record responses. This is what they should do in each class:
    1. Introduce themselves. (30 seconds)
    2. Remind the class what question they were asked last time. (1 min)
    3. Explain what has happened as a result of their views from last week. (2 mins)
    4. Explain this week’s question. (1 min)
    5. Get all groups to discuss the question and come up with an answer they all agree on. (5 mins)
    6. Get one person from each group to stand up and explain the decision they came to. (5 mins)
    7. This should be written down or recorded by the school council reps – the easiest way to do this is by video camera or voice recorder.
    8. Thank the class and explain when they will be back. (30 seconds)
    9. The school council reps go over the views of class and summarise them in a couple of sentences.
    10. These summarised views are reported back to the school council to form the basis of their decision, or to feed in to it.

The outcome

Young children have the opportunity to genuinely input in to decisions that affect them.

They start to practice skills of: expressing opinions, compromise, taking turns, reporting back and chairing.

Additional ideas

You could create a more direct democratic structure by asking everyone to vote after their little discussions, and recording these votes and aggregating them across the school.

It is very helpful for the school council reps to have a script to follow. This gives them confidence and ensures that each class is being treated uniformly.

You can also start introducing the concept of a chair person, whose job it is to make sure everyone gets a chance to speak.

Try to make sure that a different person from each small group feeds back each week so all have a chance to practice this. The same should be done with chairing. This can be achieved by having children in the same small groups each week. Within each group people should be numbered. In week 1, all the 1s report back, in week 2, the 2s report back, and so on.

Download this idea as a PDF: [download id=”246″]

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Primary school council policy

The new headteacher of Welbourne Primary School in Tottenham – the school I’m a governor of – has asked me to help set up a new school council. My first step is to come up with a draft policy that I’ll use as the starting point for discussions with staff and pupils.

Download this sample policy to adapt and use: [download id=”240″]

I’m obviously trying to keep it short and simple so everyone can understand it. Here’s my first attempt. I’ll update it as the discussions progress. Do you have any comments or suggestions?

The 10 Commandments from flcikr/jbtaylor
Well, I couldn't quite get it down to 10, but it's what we're aiming for.

What is our school council for?

  • The school council is about:
    • Learning to work together
    • Learning about democracy
    • Learning how to play a positive role in our community
  • The school council’s job is to involve everyone, not do everything. It needs to get everyone:
    • Finding things they want to change
    • Coming up with ways to make them better
    • Putting those ideas in to action
    • Seeing what works (evaluating)

How does our class council work?

  • Our whole class has a meeting every 2 weeks on [day] at [time].
  • We decide what we’re going to talk about the day before the meeting, so everyone has time to think.
  • A different person runs the meeting each time (with help from the teacher if they need it).
  • A different person takes notes each time (with help from the teacher if they need it).
  • We choose two people from our class to go to a whole school council meeting.

What will the school council do for our class?

  • When you give your class representative an idea, she or he will:
    • Note it down
    • Take it to the next school council meeting
    • Tell you what is happening to your idea within two weeks
  • The school council will try to make your idea happen by getting:
    • Permission
    • Support
    • Money
    • Time
  • If they can’t they will tell you why not.
  • If they can, they will want your class to help make your idea happen.

What will teachers and TAs do for the school council?

  • Make sure meetings happen when they are supposed to.
  • Support pupils to run meetings.
  • The Headteacher will answer all the school council’s questions within 1 week.
  • If the Headteacher has to say ‘no’ to anything, she will explain why.

Now, this isn’t as short and snappy as I’d hoped, but I think it’s a good start. We’ll see what we can cut out as we go, without losing the essence of it. We’ll also be trying to create a pictorial version. I’m sure doing that will help us work out what’s really essential.

Download this sample policy to adapt and use: [download id=”240″]

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Common school council issues – with solutions!

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:

Meetings have gone flat
What can we do if our meetings have gone flat?

Need more support from senior staff
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)?

How to build on this year's success
Things have gone well this year, how do we make sure we don't lose that?

No time for feedback
What can we do if class teachers don't give reps time to feedback?

How to get better motivated people involved
The people on the school council aren't great at getting things done, what can we do?

Not being treated seriously by staff
What can I do if other staff in the school don't give the school council the importance it deserves/needs?
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Some cool tools from the BBC

Choose from four different visual tools on the BBC's Pinball site
Choose from four different visual tools on the BBC's Pinball site

A teacher on Twitter (@dannynic) pointed this out today:

bbc.co.uk/pinball

It’s four great little tools for decision-making and coming up with creative ideas:

  • Firing out ideas
  • Making quick decisions
  • Mixing up ideas
  • Playing with images

I just had a little play with them and it seems to me they could be great tools to use in your school council meeting or action group, especially if you’ve got an interactive whiteboard.

Have a go!

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Resources

A whole bloomin’ class council scheme of work!

This is brilliant: our first resource shared by a teacher and it’s an absolute corker! Chloe Doherty gave us this scheme of work she wrote for her year team last year.  She wanted to get class councils off the ground as she recognised without them the school and year councils didn’t really mean much.

This resource has a series of lesson/session plans and a bundle of resources to go with them. Any resources not included in the download below (such as the Boundaries Cards) can be downloaded from involver.org.uk.

As this is a resource written by a teacher and used in her school, I’ve left it just as she gave it to me, other than putting it all in to one document and adding a contents page.

Print or download (’save’) this resource using the ‘More’ button.

Tutorial Activities Class Council SoW

Chloe wrote this last year when she was Head of Drama at Kingsmead School and a Year 8 form tutor. She’s now Head of Drama at Southgate School.  She’s also my fiancée, so all my banging on about student voice and class councils obviously wore her down as she wrote and ran this without any help from me. She sent it to us through the ‘Upload‘ page and it was honestly the first time I’d seen it! I could get all gooey about how she constantly amazes me, but I’ll spare you that.

Kingsmead