Can your school council noticeboard actually help drive change?
Pretty much every school I go to has one and they almost all consist of the same things:
Photos of the school council (often last year’s)
Minutes of the the last meeting (who stops at a noticeboard to read closely-typed minutes?)
A poster saying ‘have your say/make a difference/we’re your voice!’
Other than underlining for Ofsted that you have a school council, what does this actually achieve?
How about if you used that space instead for a Progress Board. This would allow everyone in the school to see:
What the school council is working on
Who they talk to to get involved
What the hold ups are (this can put gentle pressure on a slow-moving Headteacher or Caretaker to respond)
What’s off-limits and what’s been achieved
Anyway after years of describing this idea to people and sketching it up on flipcharts at training sessions I finally created a graphic last night which shows just what I mean.
If you set up a board like this you need to make sure it is updated at least once a week: make a member of the school council Progress Board Officer. Click the image to see the full-sized version.
Do you have any other ideas for what might go on here (or on a board next to it).
I’d also love to see how something like this could be part of a school council’s page on their VLE or website.
Let us know in the comments if you’ve got any ideas.
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):
I wrote this little pocket guide for the school councils of some secondary schools I’m working with. It should be useful to anyone who’s interested in becoming a rep (representative) or is one already and wants some tips on how to make a good job of it.
Most schools have reps as part of the way they run student voice, often class reps, year or house council reps and then even school council reps who might meet with people from other schools.
But being a rep’s not easy, so here are some tips and guides on how to do it well.
Inside you’ll find answers to all of these questions:
What is a rep (representative)?
What’s good student voice?
What does a rep do?
How do I collect views?
How do I create change?
How do meetings work?
What should I ask in meetings?
How do I run a meeting?
What are minutes?
Can meetings be fun?
How do I present an idea?
How do we get things done?
It’s designed as an A5 booklet so if you print it our double-sided onto A4 all the pages should match up
Download the PDF here:
[download id=”220″]
As with all of our work, we release it under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike licence, so if you want to remix it – add your own logos, etc. – you can do that with the Publisher files here:
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?
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.
On a train again, heading back to London after a few days in the Edinburgh Festival, I thought I’d write a few reflections on starting up our social enterprise.
Not to suggest that we’ve had world-beating success or anything, but to look back on our experience of developing an organisation around a set of ideas, that’s given us both a job!
So here we go….
Get started, but change things up
'On the origin of logos'
The great benefit you have as a new organisation is that you can change big things very quickly.
You need to get up and running and making money in the area that you want to work, but don’t feel bad about making big changes when you’re starting up: change things up!
There’s no six month review on a new three year strategy, there’s no board of trustees to pass things through, there’s just good ideas and not-so-good ideas.
It’s your job to find the good ideas and use them to direct what you do, and how you describe it.
That’s not to suggest that you shouldn’t plan ahead, but being able to change things to make sure you get them right.
Ross, a former-colleague who’s now in the Digital Diplomacy Group at FCO described us as being ‘agile’ – I think this is a good way to describe it. And being agile in changing times like these is definitely a good thing!
We’re constantly tweaking our business plan, and it’s always out of date pretty quickly. It’s quite funny looking back at the earliest versions and how far our thinking has developed – hopefully in the right direction!
And as things develop …
You’ll have to learn stuff, but don’t try to learn everything
You’ll have to learn stuff.
This might seem obvious, but some of this stuff that you’ll have to learn is probably stuff you might not be that interested in learning. Sad but true.
Having worked in big organisations like the civil service, where you know your job description down to the letter (so that you can palm off as much work as possible!), it’s clear that this is the opposite.
In a small organisation like ours (two people), being versatile is important. And not always in a fun way: playing chief executive is fun, but we both need to be admin assistants too!
Knowing the limits of your versatility is the tough bit: the trick is to be able to differentiate between knowing when it’s worth taking the time to learn something, and when you’re best off paying an expert to do it.
Why spend two weeks learning to use an accountancy package when you can pay an accountant to do them in a day? Resources may be scarce, but it’s important to remember what you’re good at, and why you’re there in the first place.
I guess if you can do something:
To a good standard
Quickly
Without paying
Which will benefit you again in the future
Then do it! If it’s a one off that will take ages, then don’t!
Sometimes you’ve got friends you can call on to help you with this stuff, but …
Be wary of overplaying connections
Just because you’re excited about your new organisation, and you’ve got a really good contacts, it doesn’t mean you should push them all really hard to help you.
At best, you could force them to reluctantly give you a hand on something they don’t want to do, at worst, you could lose them as a contact all together.
Better to gently remind people of what you’re up to, and open up any opportunities to them. Reminding people is usually pretty easy too, because of the sheer number of ways that you can contact people – twitter, facebook, linkedin, phone, email, letter etc…
Of course, give your cards out widely, chat about what you’re doing with everyone, and there might be a time when you’re begging your Auntie’s son for some legal advice, but in general, I think it’s best to be patient with your efforts.
This could be anyone – a web designer, a lawyer, or an SEO expert – and I think the rule holds for them all.
Interestingly, I see this A LOT in London, maybe because there are just more blaggers here. A friend and I were talking about the same thing within the music industry- people mistake having a contact, with actually doing the work themselves – dangerous!
