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Student voice ideas and projects

Last week I ran a training course for ASCL on student voice: Student voice beyond school councils

I asked all the delegates to list as many student voice ideas, initiatives and projects as they could, both those used in their schools, and others that they had heard of. This is the list they came up with. I provided the five headings, but I did not offer a specific definition of what ‘student voice’ is. You might find it useful to prompt discussion in your school and give you some ideas for how you could expand student voice. Below the list I offer a bit of analysis of some of the methods.

Teaching and learning

Teaching and learning ideas

  • Learning walks to other establishments
  • 1st week of Scheme of Work is planning the scheme with the students
  • Student curriculum panels
  • Student governors
  • Students as researchers
  • Students into lesson programme
  • Peer teaching
  • Student interviewers
  • Part of departmental review/visits
  • ‘My World’ Project-based learning, completely self-directed with vivas
  • Drama in Education Theatre Group [Reaction] help organise + deliver assemblies, e.g. work experience/bullying
  • Student appointment panels
  • Reading: peer mentors – Y10 top set English used to support low ‘reading age’ students in Y7 + Y8 x 30 mins per week in library
  • Policy consultation
  • Mini ‘Insted’ – termly
  • Peer mentoring
  • Golden lessons
  • Lesson feedback + surveys
  • Student researcher: what makes a good lesson?
  • Student mentoring
  • Student-led mentoring
  • Students used to observe and score candidates’ presentations during SELECTION PROCESS
  • Student mentoring Y12 pupils mentoring Y10
  • Reading pairs
  • Pupils to observe lessons and give feedback
  • Students involved in departmental meetings discussing teaching and learning issues
  • Student council
  • Learning council
  • Student SEF
  • Homework review: regularity, consistency, quality, use of school system
  • Lead learners – student observers
  • Student lesson observations
  • Student voice questionnaires in department learning reviews
  • Student interview panel
  • Language champions
  • Student receptionist
  • Digital leaders
  • Pupils as observers
  • Debating society
  • Student involvement in lesson observations and feedback
  • Student learning exchange visits
  • Student panel involvement in staff reviews
  • Student voice panel on all staff interviews
  • Learning walks, possible to use students
  • Student panel involvement in departmental reviews

Environment

  • Ground Force group
  • Looking into solar energy
  • Consultations for colour schemes for school
  • Keeping an eye on what needs doing
  • Chickens
  • Community voice reps
  • Enterprise reps
  • Students working with school interior manager to update displays around the school throughout the year
  • Key stage toilets
  • Eco school
  • Student marketing and branding group
  • School council influence on things such as uniform, dinners, toilets
  • BeMAD (fundraising group)
  • Tree planting
  • School council
  • Charity reps
  • Recycling

Relationships

  • Peer mentoring support groups
  • Anti-bullying support
  • Students running societies – e.g. politics society, debating
  • Student tours for visitors
  • Partnership with local schools’ council
  • Meet and greet/guides at open evenings and for visitors
  • Subject prefects – helping with activities involving younger pupils
  • Volunteer council
  • Student ambassadors
  • Working with primary students – sports leaders + dance leaders
  • ‘Pay it forward’ council
  • Promoting the school – 6th Form student ambassadors (this also generates feedback)
  • Confidential clinic
  • Health and safety society (leads to STI presentations)
  • Peer mentors – Blue Guardian Angels – used to support younger students with emotional issues, behavioural issues or bullying
  • Student senior leaders + SCT meetings
  • Links to town council – chambers for meetings
  • Rights Respecting Schools
  • Peer mentoring

Behaviour

  • Behaviour for learning group
  • Student duty staff
  • Pulling pupils out of detention to discuss areas within student voice – gauge their opinion
  • School policies: uniform, bullying, etc.
  • Development of anti-bullying policy
  • Peer mentors – restorative justice
  • Development of behaviour policy
  • Students given specific duties to monitor behaviour at break and lunch times
  • Anti-bullying strategies, e.g. poster competitions/campaign, anti-bullying group
  • House system – vertical groups mean highest level students can assist younger pupils, e.g. UCAS admissions

Other

  • Fair trade
  • Involved in school and student liturgy groups (Catholic school)
  • Representation at Town Remembrance Service
  • Peer support
  • VLE: setting up a student voice forum
  • Ideas – feedback on student menus
  • House captains
  • Open evenings/parents evenings: front of house, tours, speaking
  • Shadow governors
  • Student council
  • Student interview panels for higher TLR posts
  • Big Idea reps
  • Involved in staff appointments
  • Young Enterprise
  • Charity/fundraising
  • Student governors
  • Citizenship Award: For student in Y10 who has taken his/her own initiative to support the school. Focus decided by student.
  • Primary school links: language, citizenship, PE, etc.
  • Meeting VIPs
  • Visiting speakers
  • 6th Form partnership group
  • Fundraising
  • On-line Agony Aunt
  • Youth Parliament
  • Front desk
  • Sports leaders
  • Naming student voice as ‘The Voice’ (also a singing contest pupils like).
  • Non-uniform days for charities
  • Sub-committees for various issues (Buildings & Environment, Relationships & Behaviour, Learning & Teaching, Events & Fundraising)
  • Young chamber
  • Links with local youth council and local area action group
  • SNAG: School Nutrition Action Group
  • Youth Parliament
  • Prefects involved in charity/local fundraising and activities
  • International school
  • Working groups: Environment, Website, Canteen, Fundraising & Events
  • Student guides

Analysis

The first thing that struck me was simply how many ideas were under the ‘teaching and learning’ heading. A few years ago very few schools even saw this as an appropriate issue for school councils and student voice to touch on. During our discussions throughout the day it was also clear that it was the area that all of the teachers in the room wanted students to be able to have more of an impact on.

The methods suggested demand a little more examination though. This is not my list and I would not suggest any school should be doing all of these things (I don’t even know what all of them are) but most are worth a go. However, whilst there are many very good ideas here, I wouldn’t classify all of them as ‘student voice’. I think a distinction should be made between ‘student leadership’, ‘students given responsibility’ and ‘student voice’. All can be useful but confusing them can have unintended consequences for learning.

Having students as receptionists, showing people around the school and presenting at conferences is excellent: the students learn skills, and better understand how the school works, the school demonstrates its ethos of putting young people at its heart and the guests/visitors/delegates get a different perspective on the school. Everyone wins. Unless you tell the young people that this is their way of having a say in how the school runs, in how they learn, because it’s not. It teaches them that you (and by extension others in power) don’t know how to listen and don’t care to give them the appropriate opportunity to be heard. That’s not a good thing for your school, or society as a whole.

It’s somewhat similar to the experience of the Games Makers at the Olympics. They were integral to its success and thousands of them gave their time gladly and were rightly proud of the part they had played. If they had been recruited with the promise that they would ‘have a say’ in how the Games was run would they have been so happy to turn up on day two when it became clear on day one that their job was just to point people in the right direction?

So be clear about the opportunities available to students, why they are valuable, what they will get out of it, what they can contribute, but don’t over-promise.

Type (Asher’s) definition Examples Learning opportunities
Students given responsibility Students are asked to carry out duties that someone else has defined.There is little or no opportunity for them to change what these duties are.
  • Monitors
  • Prefects
  • Student receptionists
  • Guide for visitors
  • Sports captains
  • Peer mediators
  • Skills for a particular job
  • Learning how the school functions
  • Responsibility
  • Mediation
  • Being a role model
Student leadership Students take on a leadership role in issues that do not affect the core business of the school or their community.These roles are not initiated by students, but they may be quite self-directed in the way they fulfil them.
  • Fundraising for external charities
  • Student mentoring
  • Debating society
  • Student ambassadors
  • Running after-school clubs
  • Sports/drama/arts leaders (who just assist the teacher)
  • Being /having positive, young role models
  • Planning
  • Organisation
  • Presenting
  • Developing responsibility and independence
Student voice – individual Students are asked, as individuals, to feed in to the decisions made about them in school.
  • Surveys
  • Feedback forms
  • Polls
  • Individual, self-directed study
  • That students’ views and opinions are valued
  • That staff are keen to continue improving and learning
Student voice – democratic Students are asked to collectively feed in to decisions made about the core business of the school (T&L, buildings, behaviour, policies, rules)This needs to involve some level of discussion, collaboration, negotiation and compromise. It is not simply passing on 1200 views, but coming to some shared positions.
  • School councils (backed by an effective, whole school structure)
  • Students as researchers group
  • Student governors
  • Student sub-committees
  • Compromise
  • Negotiation
  • Responsibility
  • Understanding of how the school works
  • Being a representative
  • Organisation
  • Communication
  • Planning
  • That students’ views and opinions are valued
  • That staff are keen to continue improving and learning
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Primary school council elections

I got a lovely email today from one of the schools we’ve been working with this year. They’re thinking about how their school council elections will run next year and wanted some advice. It reminded me that I’d written this resource a while ago but not posted it for some reason.

It contains:

  • A recommended timeline for setting up a school council election.
  • 2 lesson plans for how to prepare classes across the school for taking part.
  • A manifesto worksheet for pupils to use to recommend themselves.

Have a look and let us know if you find it useful and how you’ve improved on it.

[gview file=”http://involver.org.uk/dl/Primary-election-process.pdf” save=”0″]

You can download a PDF here (keeps all the formatting and fonts):  [download id=”248″]

Or a Word file here (if you want to  edit and adapt it): [download id=”249″]

I also gave the teacher who emailed some other tips:

  1. Get in touch with Haringey Democratic Services: http://www.haringey.gov.uk/index/council/voting.htm#contact – they should be able to lend you proper ballot boxes and booths, they may even send someone to talk to the school about how elections are run (of course you’d want to check that they were used to speaking to young children).
  2. Have children as the returning officers: counting votes and announcing the results – they need a little training, especially on confidentiality, but it tends to work very well – make sure they only announce the winner, not how many votes each person got as that can be embarrassing and upsetting. If you didn’t want to get children from the school to do it, members of Haringey Youth Council may be able to (if we could get them out of school), they are keen to develop relationships with primary schools.
  3. Make sure you do some prep with all the classes before the nominations, hustings and elections, so people know why they should stand, what they should put in their manifestos and why they should vote for someone (who isn’t their friend). The attached document has a suggested process and some sessions that teachers could run with their classes (of course please feel free to adapt them to your situation).

Obviously if you’re not in Haringey you’ll want to talk to your local Democratic Services and Youth Council, not ours, but you get the idea.

And just because it’s so great to get feedback like this, this is the email that prompted it:

Hi Asher,

Just wanted to say thank you for all your help with the School Council this year- it has really improved a lot! I now meet with my School Council members every week, and there are class council meetings every other week when children give their opinions on a range of important issues. They’ve seen lots of changes take place and are beginning to understand the power of pupil voice. Every classroom has a display and space for children to make suggestions.

Now everyone wants to be in School Council next year! We are going to have manifestos, speeches, and a proper election with ballot boxes voting cards in September. If you can give any advice on how to develop this idea further, that would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks again,

Laura
Alexandra Primary

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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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Broadening the scope of meetings

The last little idea I posted was about how to improve chairing of meetings. This one will help to ensure that your meetings cover the range of things they need to.

The issue

Meetings get stuck on a certain issue or type of issue, which results in one or more of the following problems:

  • The work of the council only deals with one area (e.g. fundraising events) rather than addressing the whole of school life.
  • The council spends all its time on projects so provides no forum for raising issues.
  • The council spends all its time raising issues, so takes no action.
  • The council only discusses issues suggested by the headteacher and doesn’t have time to deal with its own ideas.

The suggestion

  1. Split your meeting in to sections that will remain the same every meeting. Examples:
    • Fundraising & Events, Buildings & Environment, Learning & Teaching, Relationships & Behaviour
    • New issues from classes, Project updates
    • Issues to be passed on (no discussion needed), Issues that may need discussion, Project updates.
    • Quick win issues and projects, Longer-term issues and projects
    • Issues from headteacher, Issues from classes
  2. Allocate an amount of time you will spend on each section. This doesn’t need to be an equal spilt, it should reflect the importance and complexity of each issue.
  3. When drawing up the agenda things need to fit in to one of these sections.
  4. When people are proposing items for the agenda they need to say which section they feel their issue fits under.
  5. This should be done transparently so that people can see why there isn’t time for their item on the agenda.

The outcome

More projects on the go at any one time.

Meetings that have scope for teacher-led consultation, student-identified issues and student-led projects.

Additional ideas

If you are facing more than one of the issues above, you can split each section in to sub-sections, for example by having ‘New issues’ and ‘Project updates’ under each of the project type headings (‘Fundraising & Events’, etc.).

Using the project type headings you could split your council into sub-committees so you have named people working on a variety of issues.

Evaluate regularly: is the split you’ve decided upon creating the mix of discussion you were aiming for? If not propose how it might be changed.

Sample agenda

This is how an agenda drawn up in this way might look

Item Person Time
1. Apologies Secretary 1 min
2. Approval of last minutes Chair 1 min
3. New issues from classes (max 20 min)
3A. Ensuring homework is returned on time Jeremy 5 mins
3B. Making water fountains accessible Asha 5 mins
3C. Late, urgent issues Chair
4. Project updates (max 20 mins)
4A. Learning survey Orla 5 mins
4B. Creating a new travel plan Danny 5 mins
4C. End of term party Sandra 10 mins
5. Any other urgent project updates Chair
6. Date of next meeting Secretary 1 min

You may not always have enough to discuss to fill the maximum time in each section, that’s fine. Don’t allocate the time to other things, finish the meeting early. You decided on the split for a reason based on importance. It should slowly encourage people in to bringing up the kinds of issues that are important.

Download this idea as a PDF: [download id=”245″]

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Improving meetings and other ideas

When we were running training for teachers in the Czech Republic in May I suggested a number of simple ideas that our hosts asked me to write up. It’s taken me a while, but this is the first of them. We’ll be posting the rest over the coming days.

The issue

Students don’t have the skills to run meetings themselves.

The suggestion

  1. Finish all your meetings 2 minutes early.
  2. In this time ask one question to all of the participants:
    • What did the chairperson do well?
  3. Write all the answers on a large piece of paper.
  4. Put this up where the chairperson can see it at every meeting.
  5. At the end of each meeting ask the question again and add new responses.

The outcome

You have a growing list of tips for chairpeople, so more people feel confident to chair meetings.
Reflecting on what made the meeting go well ensures that the meeting is a learning experience.

Additional ideas

Once you feel you have a good list about chairing you could change the question and start coming up with new lists of tips:

  • What did the adults in our meeting do well?
  • What did we do well to solve problems?
  • What did people do well to represent their classes?

Download this guide as a PDF: [download id=”244″]

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School councils in Poland

I’ve just got back from a fantastic couple of days in Warsaw presenting at an event hosted by Fundacja Civis Polonus.  I wanted to quickly note down a few things that came up whilst I was there.

As with our experiences in the Czech Repulbic and Ireland, I found that many of the issues are similar to those we face in the UK and there are things we can learn from how they are dealing with them.

The law

In England, Scotland and Northern Ireland there is no requirement to have a school council, although there is a lot of guidance that pushes schools towards them. Wales does require schools to have a school council but the way their law is framed is quite different to the approach Poland has taken.

In Poland since the fall of Communism schools have been required to have a school council. Their law also specifies which areas of school life the school council should be involved in and that all students need to be involved. This sounds great to me and much more useful than a law that specifies structures (numbers of meetings, electoral processes, etc.) but not areas of influence.

Despite this, the issues are around the law not being enforced, or at least the important aspects of it are not. Whilst just about every school has a school council they are not widely involved in school life and they involve very few people. The consensus amongst those at the event was that they tended to focus on just raising money for charity and organising parties. One of the other presenters, Michal from Centrum Edukacji Obywatelskiej (CEO), showed research that suggested that over 40% of students hadn’t even voted in a school council election, let alone been more deeply involved.

So the law in itself isn’t enough, there needs to be support for students and schools to understand what they could and should be doing and help them to do it. That’s the aim of Funacja Civis Polonus, CEO and their partners. We’ll be doing what we can to support them and also to learn what we can from them to support schools in the UK.

Polish School Council Noticeboard
The bright coloured text apparently means 'Small Government' Michael Gove would be proud.

Ideas from a Warsaw school council co-ordinator

On Tuesday I visited a primary school in the suburbs of Warsaw (which has students up to the age of about 14) and met with the school council co-ordinator who explained how their school council works. There was lots of good stuff happening but three things jumped out at me as possibly of interest to UK schools:

There is a teacher with responsibility for children’s rights. This is an advocate for the children in the school. It seems to me that it might be good to have a governor with this responsibility.

The school council co-ordinator is elected by students. Teachers who are willing nominate themselves and commit to the job. I imagine they may have to produce a manifesto and/or campaign. Students then elect the person they think will support them best. I wonder how this would work in UK schools? Would it raise the profile of student voice amongst staff and students?

The school council are allowed to use the Tannoy to keep people up to date with what they are doing and to remind the student body of what they need to discuss or do to support student voice. I don’t know how many schools have public address systems like this, but where they exist it could be a useful tool.