Tag: communication

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School councils and democracy: pick your model carefully

Modelling democracy is an incredibly important role of the school council, but it’s something that’s easy to get wrong. The first thing to think about it what type of democracy you want to model. The simplest answer is to base it on our local or national model. The problem with this is that most people adults feel pretty disconnected from this. Another option schools go for is what some schools might call the ‘effective democracy’ model: there is some voting involved, but staff push certain students who they ‘know would get things done’ into position. This model of democracy has recently been rebelled against in various Arab countries, but is still being used in Zimbabwe.

involver voting+ logo
There's more to democracy than voting. That's what our logo's supposed to represent: a voter's X with a +

I would suggest the type of democracy schools should want to model is one where:

a) People are engaged throughout the year, not just once when they vote.

b) Where representatives are picked they are selected solely by the people they represent.

What I mean by being engaged is that the whole school is involved in:

  • Identifying issues
  • Creating solutions
  • Carrying them out
  • Evaluating them

These aren’t things we expect other people to do for us, just because we elected them at the beginning of the year.

So, here’s what you need to do:

  1. Decide on what type of democracy you want to model – what values are important, not what structures.
  2. Decide on what kind of elections would best achieve this.
  3. Understand that any elections and representatives are just a small part of this.
  4. Get in touch with your local authority’s Democratic Services; they can help you out with ballot boxes, voting booths, etc.
  5. Give people plenty of warning about standing and help them to find out what it would mean to be a representative.
  6. Make sure your elections are open and fair and run in the same way across the school.
  7. Set up and keep up excellent communication between the whole school and the school council.
  8. Make sure everyone has the chance to get involved in problem solving through class councils, action teams, whole school meetings and so on.
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Project planning and evaluation videos for school councils

We helped make this series of six videos for Parliament’s Education Service. As well as encouraging schools to enter the Speaker’s School Council Award they contain loads of great tips from MPs and school councillors of all ages on how to make any project a success.

If your school council or project team is getting a bit stuck have a watch of some of these, they might just give you a few ideas.

Why enter the Speaker’s School Council Award

Getting ideas and choosing a project

Planning your project

Keeping your team on track

Keeping people informed and involved

Evaluating your project

These videos were all shot, directed and edited by the fantastic Kwame Lestrade of Franklyn Lane Films.

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Tutor/form time activities to prepare for a school council election

Decisions and action illustration
"You should move that bloomin' great big box", "No, you should", "They should", "Or her"

I wrote these tutor/form time activities a while ago for a school I was working with in Coventry, not sure why I haven’t posted them until now. Often elections are just sprung upon a school without any preparation. No one thinks to explain to the whole school why they should choose to stand, or how they should choose who to vote for. What this ends up with is the same people (and the same kind of people) getting elected every year.

Each one of these short sessions leads people towards an understanding of why they should stand to be a representative, or what they should consider when they are voting.

Download the whole lot here [download id=”229″] or read more …

There are 5 sessions plus the election itself. They are all participative sessions, but the resources should enable any teacher to feel confident facilitating the sessions.:

A) What is democracy?
There’s more to democracy than just voting, it’s an ongoing process. It’s not about others making decision for you, it’s about you being involved in the decision.
[download id=”230″]

B) What is a School Council?
The kinds of things the School Council might deal with.
[download id=”231″]

C) How does the School Council communicate with the whole school?
Explain the structures of the decision-making and the School Council in our school. Explain about recall. Explain structure of form/tutor groups to Year/House council to School Council. and frequency of meetings.
[download id=”232″]

D) What is a representative?
What qualities are needed by a representative?
[download id=”233″]

E) How do our elections work?
The processes for nominating, standing and voting are explained. Explain terminology of closed ballot, etc. Explain that the whole year/house will be electing year/house reps to School Council from the reps who are elected as form/tutor reps.
[download id=”234″]

The eventual voting process is ‘blind’, by which I mean people vote for a manifesto, rather than voting for a person. The school this was written for originally choose to run their election in this way to avoid it being a popularity contest and instead base it on policies and ideas.
[download id=”235″] (PDF) or [download id=”236″] (Word)

Practicalities

You can run any of the sessions on their own, but I think they probably work best as a series.

They’re each 15 minutes long, but could usefully stretch if you had the time.

It says they are for ‘vertical’ tutor groups of about 20, but they should work just as well with larger groups and groups based on age.

Files

You can download all 5 activities (including instructions and all resources) here: [download id=”229″]

Or you can download them individually if you want:

  • [download id=”230″]
  • [download id=”231″]
  • [download id=”232″]
  • [download id=”233″]
  • [download id=”234″]
  • [download id=”235″] (PDF) or [download id=”236″] (Word)

Each download is a zip file containing:

  • Instructions (in Word and PDF format)
  • An (animated) PowerPoint slideshow illustrating the key points
  • PDFs Posters of the essential bits of the slideshow for those who don’t have a projector/IWB
  • Any worksheets (in Word and PDF format)

If you can’t download  zip files and need the files separately send me an email and I’ll get them over to you: asher@involver.org.uk

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Putting ideas in to action

It’s great when someone gets in touch to tell you that they’ve tried an idea you’ve thrown out into the internet (and that it’s working!).

I got this email and photo today:

Hi Asher,

I hope this email finds you well.

As you know, we didn’t have a student council notice board but having found the idea for a progress board on the Involver website, the students wanted one. So I just wanted to say thank you and I’ve attached a photo of our own 2.5 metre by 1.5 metre version. It’s certainly sparking some interesting conversation.

Many thanks,

Zoe

Lodge Park Technology College

School council progress board at Lodge Park Technology College
The school council progress board in use at Lodge Park Technology College

Also very impressed that the project second from bottom is their entry into the Speaker’s School Council Award – something we help Parliament to run. It should be on all of your boards too ;)

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Making a great student voice conference even better – part 2

This is part two of a blog on Little Heath’s Student Voice conference. You can read the first part here. This concentrated on the older students who were organising the conference, and the adults that supported them.

This second part will look at the experience of some of the younger pupils who are more recently involved with student voice. Let’s focus on student voice in learning since it’s one of the areas that the school does amazingly well. This centres around the STARs project – Students as Researchers.

The STARs (students as researchers) project is a key part of student voice in Little Heath. It’s designed to give the students an influence in their learning and school-life. Importantly, this isn’t based on whim, but research. Even more importantly, this research is student-led.

This first group looked at the types of homework that students liked most. Lots of students were complaining about their homework so they worked on a questionnaire to send out to pupils. The results were presented to Governors and SLT.

Here’s two year 9 students telling us about their STARs project. As opposed to the first group, this project focuses on classroom teaching. It looks at specific subjects: English, History and ICT in years 7 and 8. A crucial area to look at, and some very useful findings:

This group looked at the help that is available for students within the school. Here’s a member of the group talking us through the teacher questionnaire that they organised, and what will happen to their ideas:

Members of the STARs team can get involved year after year. These two members led a successful project last year, and are doing a first plan for their anti-bullying project this year:

Lots of the learning from the STARs project goes into a booklet which is given out to the school to publicise their work. Here’s the team in charge of making it:

Ongoing reflections on Homework:

Year 7 pupils (I think) talking us through their planner/homework diary/timetable.

They’re encouraged to reflect on what they’ve learnt and their homework, if there was too much or if they really enjoyed it. Teachers would then look at this. It’s a simple but good way to encourage reflection on learning and start a conversation with teachers.

Student voice in school planning:

Year 7 pupils on the Buildings and Environment group looking at how to improve this aspect of their school. They’re starting point is how they would make their school into the ‘dream school’ and they’re drawing a big map. They’re clearly getting a lot from approaching this in a visual way.

Key quote ‘it makes it come to life’

So that’s a taster of some of the great work being worked on by the younger pupils at Little Heath. The range of student voice work is really amazing, and if you’re interested, take a look at my original post from last year’s conference for a bit of analysis into why it works so well.

Well done to everyone involved :)

Greg

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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