Very often there’s just one member of staff in each school with responsibility for student voice and the school council (ideally it should be part of everyone’s role) so it can feel like you’re a bit unsupported. We’d like to set up some regular free events around London to get school council co-ordinators together to share ideas, resources (and tales of woe).
It’ll be something informal, Teachmeet-style, where we’d like to hear from anyone who is doing anything interesting in their school, or who is facing a particular challenge. We’ll be on hand to offer a school council surgery and we’ll see how it develops.
If you think you might be interested, fill out the form below:
We've had so much going on recently we haven't had much time to send out newsletters, so we've rather stuffed this one with free resources by way of apology.
Resource: Quick tips for running meetings
4 simple ideas for different ways to run class and school council meetings if you're struggling (or just fancy a change): http://involver.org.uk/?p=2973
Campaign: Hands Up Who's Bored?
With the changes to the curriculum there's a real threat to the one subject that really supports young people's participation, Citizenship. We've been helping lead Democratic Life to campaign to strengthen Citizenship for a while, but there's a new campaign aimed at young people being fronted by Danny Bartlet with Radio 1 DJ (and Rastamouse) Reggie Yates. Have a look:
Main website: http://whosbored.org/
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXgHjFSzbEQ
Resource: What's a school council for?
I created this school council policy for the school I'm a governor of. It places an emphasis on involving the whole school through class councils. Would it work in your school? What's missing? What would you add? http://involver.org.uk/?p=2842
News: Walking the walk
It was Takeover Day last month and we were really proud to take part and we got loads of great ideas from the four young people who became directors of involver for the day. This is what they thought of the experience: http://involver.org.uk/?p=3005
Resource: Children's Commissioner's 'How to' guide on student voice
We carried out some research for the Children's Commissioner in to good practice around student voice, this two-page guide for staff is one of the things that came out of it. Have a look: http://involver.org.uk/?p=2879
Get a free copy: we've just written this little guide for primary (KS2) school councillors. To thank you for taking an interest in what we do, we'd like to give you a free copy. If you'd like one, email us your address: info@involver.org.uk Get more than one copy: if you want more you can order them here: http://involver.org.uk/shop/
On our travels
During the (English) half-term we were invited over to Ireland to train teachers and students from County Donegal's primary, post-primary and Youth Reach schools. It went so well that we're going back in March, after a trip to train up the school councils of Prague. We are living the life! Although he's difficult to make out, that's Greg outside our first training venue, the Donegal Cultural Centre – the day did get sunnier.
On Friday 11 November, Tottenham-based, social enterprise, involver, will be taken over by pupils from Welbourne Primary School. Four pupils will be made Directors of involver for a day, running the organisation and deciding on its future strategy.
This is being organised as part of a national day of action by young people, co-ordinated by the Children’s Commissioner for England, under the banner of Takeover Day 2011.
The enterprising young pupils will be writing new resources for other schools to use, blogging about their day, calling up Haringey schools to talk about working together and creating a strategy for involver to follow for the rest of the year.
Martell, 11, who will be one of the Directors for a day, is excited by the opportunity, “I think it’s good that we’re going to get to run involver, because their business is about schools and kids, so we’ll have good ideas about what they could do.”
Asher Jacobsberg, one of involver’s founders and it’s (current) Director, said, “We help schools to get young people learning about democracy by playing an active part in running their schools, so this is a great opportunity for us to practice what we preach. I think we’ll finish this day with better, more relevant ideas for how we can help primary-age students than we could come up with in a year on our own.”
Maggie Atkinson, Children’s Commissioner for England said: “I am very excited about our fifth Children’s Commissioner’s Takeover Day this year, and I look forward to hearing about what people are doing. The day provides such a brilliant opportunity for children and young people to make a difference to their schools and communities, have their voices heard and challenge the stereotypes about them that we hear too often. Children and young people have so much to offer. They bring ideas, imagination and energy which can really make a difference to organisations.”
The Welbourne pupils will start by learning about what a social enterprise is and then move on to the real work: creating a strategy for involver’s work with primary-age pupils. Once they’ve thrashed that out they will be starting to put it in to action.
Pupils might end up outlining books to help school councils involve the whole school, organising events for Haringey schools, or writing sessions for training other young people. Involver are clear that what the Welbourne pupils do really is up to them, they are the bosses.
Involver have committed to carry through on the strategies decided by the young people and credit them as colleagues on any materials arising from their work.
Loads of school council elections are taking place across the country, but many of them aren’t organised as well as they could be.
Often this is perfectly understandable; running the election is sometimes thrust upon an unsuspecting teacher, so here’s a complication of the resources we’ve got to help you out!
1. A set of 15 minute short tutor time activities to help plan a school council election:
3. Our school council reps toolkit might help students understand what’s involved as a school councillor (sometimes if they’re not sure what’s involved, they won’t put themselves forward).
Welcome back to school. Hope you all had a fun summer!
To give you a quick idea of what we’ve been up to…..
In between lovely holidays to Loch Ness, Aberdeen, Rugby and France, we’ve been doing lots of work on the Smart School Council Community, a charity we’re setting up and supporting.
It’s led by fifteen founding schools who we know have AMAZING student voice/school councils. Any young person, teacher or governor can join for FREE and get some help (or help others) with your school council. Good deal, right?
As a social enterprise based in Tottenham, we’ve been busy helping out after the riots. As well as donating and sorting clothes, Asher’s been writing about the subject and also been on the radio talking about it. That second link features a hilarious picture of him.
Related to these events, and the questions about education and engagement in the UK today, we’re working on an exciting new film project with the Carib Theatre Company and Franklyn Lane Productions. We’ll keep you posted.
We also had a great time at the UKYP Annual Sitting. LOADS of really engaged young people who are a credit to their areas and the UKYP too. Here’s Asher next to our stand:
And here’s our map where you could rate your school council:
Finally, don’t forget that you can get us in to do some training in your school or cluster of schools.
We’ve got lots of training booked, including trips to the Republic of Ireland and the Czech Republic.
