Here’s Alison’s second blog, about the amazing Student Voice Conference at Little Heath! I’ve got a few videos from the day too, which I’ll upload soon.
It’s been an exciting couple of weeks!
Wednesday 2nd February was our annual Student Voice Conference at Little Heath. If I’m being honest I can’t believe it is over for another year! But there is still lots of work to keep us busy.
The conference was a real success.
Alok Sharma, MP for Reading West opened the day and encouraged the students in the importance of youth participation. The three workshops that took place were really thought provoking. Some really interesting ideas have come up as new projects for the STARS (Students As Researchers) to research. A particular favourite of mine is the idea of students having influence in teachers planning and having a say in the content of their lessons and the way it is taught.
The second workshop on student leadership got students thinking about the things that they want to be recognised for and how this can fit into a framework. For example, how the framework could be based around bronze, silver and gold levels. There were so many ways that students would like to be recognised for leadership, not just in Student Voice. They came up with ideas like Duke of Edinburgh, leading reading clubs and doing community service. It is exciting that the content and design for this framework is going to come completely from the students.
The third workshop looked at student Rights and Responsibilities. This linked into behaviour and how students want to feel safe. In addition, they looked at what helps them in the classroom to have a more effective learning experience. The students were also really forthcoming with ideas and how to refresh the schools Code of Conduct document into something more student friendly.
A question panel in the afternoon was a good chance for the students to ask questions to some of the staff. Questions about what they think makes a good learning environment, curriculum developments, advice for pathways after leaving Little Heath and also views on learning from former students.
Overall, the day was a credit to the enthusiasm of the students and their eagerness to be influential in their own education.
I think Twitter is an amazing resource and tool for teachers; I encourage all teachers I work with to join up. It gives you a quick, simple way to interact with colleagues and subject experts from outside your school and across the world. You find out what new things they’re trying, what’s working in their classrooms and what issues they’re facing. You can get help, give help and join in the debate.
… but there’s something missing …
The voice of students.
Today I was introduced by @ssat to @SchoolReport a student tweeting about his/her education and school life.
But that’s just one voice, wouldn’t it add so much to your teaching and learning if you also heard from students what was working for them, what wasn’t, the troubles and successes in their classrooms across the world. Asking them why would be very powerful. We’re all aware of the benefits for learners and teachers of getting learners to reflect on how they’re learning, asking for that to be open and enabling students and teachers to enter into conversations with each other about it would be a huge win all round.
I guess student tweeters could go down one of two routes:
Open tweeting (using your own name). If you’re confident in yourself, your school and your teachers to be mature about how feedback is given and taken.
Secret tweeting (using a pseudonym). This may be more comfortable (and fun), but I think if you’re going to go down this route you need to make sure you also don’t reveal the identity of your school, your teachers or your classmates.
So I’m not sure exactly how, but I think we need a concerted campaign to encourage more student tweeters (or should that be ‘twitterers’).
The first little step on Twitter tends to be a #hashtag, so I’ll suggest #svtweet (student voice tweet). Students already using Twitter or anyone wishing to start could tag any tweets about education or school #svtweet.
Happy New Year and welcome to involver’s first newsletter of 2011. It’s that strange time of year when Christmas feels like it was a long time ago, but there’s still ages till it gets warm. To try and take your mind off it, here’s a rundown on what we’ve been up to and also some free stuff for you.
Resource: School Council Progress Board
Asher put together this great way for school councils to keep track of how their projects are going, and the progress that is being made. Very useful, and a lot more engaging than the old and dusty ‘school council noticeboard’ that hasn’t changed in months! http://involver.org.uk/2010/10/school-council-progress-boards/
Awards: Speakers School Council Awards 2011 now open
The Speaker’s School Council Awards is rolling into action for a second year. This brilliant project rewards school and college councils that run innovative projects with a big impact. So get your school or college on the shiny new website and apply for the Award. It’s a great project that we’re absolutely chuffed to be working on with Parliament. Get involved at: www.speakersschoolcouncil.org
Party: involver is 1
Towards the end of last year, involver was 1 year old. We had a little first birthday party to celebrate, and over many, many games of table football, we said thanks to the people we’ve worked with, or who have helped us out. Here’s a few pictures from the night: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=604091&id=312498090415&ref=mf
Awards: Future 100
We recently won our second award; for being one of the Future 100 Young Entrepreneurs in the UK. It’s great to be recognised in this way because setting up a new social enterprise sometimes feels quite thankless! Read more here: http://involver.org.uk/2010/11/involver-wins-future-100-award/
Competition: £100 voucher
If you joined up to the involver newsletter after seeing our wonderfully bright pink leaflet, then welcome on board! Hope you enjoy the free resources and things we’ll be sending you from now on. Feel free to get in touch or ask a question on our site’s FAQ. The winner of the £100 vouchers was Jade Burnett-MacDonald.
News: Curriculum review and Democratic Life
As we’re sure you know, Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education, announced the review into the curriculum yesterday. If you’re a teacher, you’re probably groaning about this and asking whether we really need another review with another set of major changes. Whatever your views are, you can find out more here http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/teachingandlearning/curriculum/nationalcurriculum and click on the ‘Call for Evidence’ link to share your views and evidence of what works. As part of the Democratic Life campaign, we’re working hard to keep Citizenship in there! www.democraticlife.org.uk
Training: School Councils and Students as Lesson Observers
We’ve had a really busy time training in 2011 so far, with great sessions in Huddersfield, Basingstoke and a few in London, we’ve also started work with 3 secondary schools and 1 primary on setting up students as lesson observers. Also very rewarding was watching a Year 6 pupil, who we’d trained the week before, expertly chairing a KS1 school council meeting (hopefully we’ll get permission to post the video soon).
Music: January’s involver playlist
Here’s this newsletter’s spotify playlist. I must apologise in advance for the Simply Red song that features, it’s just that the title is pretty relevant in the current climate :) http://open.spotify.com/user/scyne/playlist/4G98SVCHNTGKV3LRnL2FZT
To be effective school councils have to be expert communicators. Often a lot of emphasis is put on public speaking, and out-going communication, but communication is a two way process and arguably how a school council collects information is even more important.
To help a secondary school in Brent think about how they canvass the views of their whole school I wrote this short, simple session. They seemed to enjoy it and it helped them come up with some really useful ideas. Why don’t you give it a try and see if it works for you?
Download the session and resources: [download id=”222″]
Aims:
For participants to experience a few different ways of collecting information.
For participants to explore what those methods might be good for and what drawbacks they might have.
Age range: 11-18
Group size: 12-30
Time: 20-30 mins
Resources:
Notepad
Whiteboard/flipchart
Tables
Chairs
Pens
Marker pens
Paper stuck to wall
Room big enough for people to move around in.
Collecting ideas instructions sheets
Face-to-face survey sheets (x5)
Written survey sheets (x5)
Method:
Before the session starts (I did this during the previous session), select 5 people who will be your ‘researchers’.
Explain to each of them what they will be doing (give each of them an instruction sheet).
Send each of your researchers to the area they’ll be working in.
Split the rest of the class up and send them to
1/3 to meeting
1/3 to written survey
1/3 to opinion wall
N.B. None to informal chat or face-to-face survey
Tell them they’ve got 10 minutes to discuss/fill out surveys, etc.
After 10 minutes bring them all back into one group.
Ask each of the researchers to feed back their findings in turn.
Also ask them how they found using that method.
After each one ask the group to think about what situations it might be good to use that research method for.
Write these up.
Add-on: Put participants into pairs, get each pair to decide on a question and a research method they will use in the next week.
Obviously you can add in other research methods, making sure you stick to the principle that they’re using the method to find out whether or not it’s a good method.
Download the session and resources: [download id=”222″]
Download the session outline and resources as Word documents (all of these are included as one download above):
Here’s a recent thinkpiece (fancy way of saying essay) for LSN’s Post-16 Magazine. They’re a great organisation that focus on post-16 education, that we plan to work with in the future.
I’ve mentioned bits and bobs of this in blog posts before, so if any of it feels familiar, that’s why.
Learner voice: why bother?
College councils. Student voice. School councils. Learner voice. Giving young people a say in how their school or college is run. Sounds like effort, doesn’t it? Students 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 or college 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 and colleges 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.
Student voice and school or college 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).
As a social enterprise, our approach is to help educational institutions to 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!
I was working in Islamia Primary School in Brent recently, 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. During their first term after 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. That’s part of what we do: not just training the politicians of tomorrow, but the citizens of today.
It’s also very important that students 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.
Not seeing these links can undermine everything. You might be less inspired about by Barack Obama’s democratic journey if your ‘democratic’ college council is just the ten brightest pupils, picked by the head teacher or college director!
So let’s be clear: a healthy democracy needs curious, active people. A healthy democracy needs healthy democratic education, and schools and colleges are central to that.
Let’s not be complacent.
Greg Sanderson
________
Greg Sanderson is co-founder of involver, a social enterprise that help young people to ‘do democracy’ in schools and colleges. We challenge tokenism in leaner voice, make school or college councils smart and active, and support young people to co-construct their education. For free resources and advice, training and tools to support this, then come and visit us at www.involver.org.uk.
How do you talk about the success of your school council?
When people visit your school do you tell them:
(a) About how this great group has redesigned the uniform, carried out an in-depth study into learning styles, raised thousands of pounds and reduced the school’s carbon footprint to zero?
(b) How it has enabled students from across the school to work together, been a channel for frustrated students to be heard and made staff think about things differently?
How do we judge politicians? On whether they 'make the trains run on time', or how democratic they are*?
Almost every school I go to tells me the (a) type things – and the problems they talk about are similarly about their inability to make visible improvements to the school. But, if I ask them what their school council is they will say it’s,
a democratic body of students, there to give the students a voice in the running of the school.
They very rarely say it’s,
a group of keen and able students who help the staff.
But more and more frequently I meet teachers who tell me they’ve selected a few of the people on the council ‘to help it work better – because some of the ones who got elected might struggle’, or even that they’ve done away with elections completely to make the school council ‘more effective’.
More effective at what?
What are the success criteria for a democratic organisation?
I would suggest that the most important is how well it involves everyone, not how well it involves the ‘right’ people. If you need to change the system to make it more effective this should be to make it more inclusive, not more efficient.
But if you’re going to change the system (and I think most schools need to), why not do both? Getting the whole school involved in identifying issues, coming up with solutions and taking action will result in far more changes and and wider engagement. Focus on spreading discussion and action to class councils, rather than pulling it in to the school council. Use whole school meetings, have online forums and noticeboards that the whole school can contribute to, set up action groups that anyone can be on, set up ‘social action time’ when the whole school is supported to work on their own projects.
* Fascist dictator of the 1920s and 30s, Benito Musolinni is often claimed to ‘have made the trains run on time’, it may well be that even this achievement is over-stated: http://www.snopes.com/history/govern/trains.asp
Searching for images to illustrate this article I came across this comic. It made me smile, which then made me think that I am falling in to the 'dad' stereotype. Ho hum.
