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School council and student voice case study: New Line Learning Academy

Here’s the second in our series of student voice case studies for the Children’s Commissioner.

Key quote:

“Everything we do is about improving the opportunities and life chances of young people. If they can see that they are helping to design their learning they are more engaged.”
Community Director

Key benefits

Engagement has improved which has meant behaviour and attainment have too. This has shifted students away from a pattern of disaffection with educational experience inherited from their families.

Students love the responsibility membership of the Design Team offers them and rise to the challenge.

A small number of sixth-form students are employed on a part-time basis to provide classroom support in Performing Arts and PE.

Top advice

  • Students should not be consulted ‘as and when’ but be an integral part of the day-to-day running of the school. They should assume that they are able to put their ideas forward and staff are expected to engage with them. This should be put in to school policy.
  • The Design Team has a core of key members but allow others to opt in and out of student voice roles – different people will be passionate about different things. Use that passion, but do not force the engagement.
  • Use the media to engage other students and keep them informed. Students speak to other students in ‘their language’, magazines, video and online.
  • Examine your curriculum: remove repetition and be creative. Through doing this, New Line Learning Academy has shortened the Key Stage 3 curriculum and given students access to Level 3 courses earlier. Create space and time for this equally important work on personal development and engagement – student discussion and well-being have equal status to academic study.

“If it’s important, and these things are, we just find the time. This is part of their learning.”

Community Director

Methods used

Design Team

The Design Team is a group drawn from across the school, anybody can be on it. They are the focal point for student voice within the school. They help to design all aspects of the school, from the logo and uniform to aspects of the curriculum.

Students volunteer themselves and can join and leave at any time. Whilst this creates some fluidity in the membership, there is also a core group of students who have specific roles. They are the heart of the Design Team and ensure that it keeps running.

The main method they use to ensure they represent the whole of the school is maintaining the diversity of their Design Team. They also use the daily 30-minute ‘well-being sessions’ in their year groups to discuss issues which are taken back to the main Design Team meetings. For more formal information gathering from the whole-school or specific year groups they create surveys in SharePoint which can be pushed to all students through the VLE. They also use a team of ‘social reporters’- Y10 students trained to use digital media to report on social issues – to examine issues and create debate. These stories often reflect external community issues and bridge the school-community interface.

Peer mentoring

A group of volunteers have been trained jointly with students from Tunbridge Girls Grammar School to provide peer support on both a social and emotional level to other students in the school. This focused on active listening and helping people to access the appropriate support structures in school for more serious issues.

Using students in this role “bridges the gap between staff and students”; those students who feel more comfortable talking to staff can and those who would rather talk to a peer can do that. A side-benefit is that it is also a very cost-effective way of improving the ratio of ‘supporters’ to those needing support. Having ‘more ears to the ground’ has enabled the school to deal with issues more quickly, before they escalate. The school’s external assessors have noted the improvement in engagement and behaviour.

Student Observers

The school felt that for their students to reach their academic potential they needed to understand what good learning and teaching is. The school uses observation as a regular, ongoing part of staff CPD (continuous professional development). It was felt that getting feedback from students as well as peers and managers gave everyone a better picture. So the scheme is used to give both students and staff a greater understanding of how learning is happening.

This was introduced gradually, but all staff are expected to participate. Students volunteer and are trained in observation and debriefing by the vice-principal, who is also an Ofsted inspector. Whilst all involved so far have found it to be beneficial and enjoyable the scheme is monitored and evaluated to improve development.

Student interviewers

It is now school policy that all teaching and pastoral appointments will involve a student interview panel. The students work with the vice-principal and the human resources manager to discuss questions and themes. The students then interview prospective candidates with a member of staff present who does not intervene. The student panel then gives feedback to the full appointments panel.

“It’s the best part of the process. Students are major (I don’t like the word, but) stakeholders. They have insights into things we may not pick up on. It’s about collective responsibility.”

Community Director

Performing Arts and Sports leaders

Sixth formers studying Sports or Performing Arts Studies are given the opportunity to become sports leaders and performing arts leaders. They are then able to help out in the classes of students lower down the school. This has huge benefits for all involved, raising self-esteem, improving aspirations and attainment. It means that GCSE students can get advice from people who have recently achieved the qualification themselves, and benefit from the greater number of people there to support them. Those taking on the leadership roles further develop their sense of responsibility and understanding of learning and teaching.

Another important benefit the school has found is using these leaders as auxiliary staff to assist with after-school activities and hires of the school facilities by external organisations and individuals. This allows the school to employ these leaders for a few hours a week, which is very helpful in keeping them in education, especially since the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) is no longer available to them. They also provide a useful service to the school in this way and get real work experience.

The school also uses these sports and performing arts leaders to improve their relationship with the local primary schools. Along with staff from New Line Learning Academy they go out to run sports, dance and drama activities for the primary pupils.

About the school

New Line Learning Academy is one of two academies run by the Future Schools Trust. New Line Learning and
Cornwallis Academies share a governing body and an executive principal, but each is led on a day-to-day basis by a head of school. The academy has specialisms in business and enterprise and in vocational studies. The school moved in to a brand new building in September 2010.

The academy accepts students of all abilities although it operates in a selective area. It is smaller than the average secondary school. Most of the students are of White British heritage, with a small number from a range of minority ethnic groups. Some of these students are at the early stages of learning English. The proportion of students known to be eligible for a free school meal is double the national average and over half have special educational needs or a disability. Students’ difficulties mainly relate to their learning or behaviour. The academy’s roll includes a small number of looked after children.

 

Involver conducted these case studies for the Office of the Children’s Commissioner in 2011, as part of a project to encourage schools to involve their students in decision making

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‘How to’ guide on student voice

Here’s the first part of our findings from a brilliant research project that we worked on for the Children’s Commissioner.

It’s all about best practice in student voice, and here’s a short ‘How to’ guide with as much advice as we could possibly fit onto two pages. Feel free to download and share.

You can download here: [download id=”237″]

The research came from in-depth research in 16 schools across England who have great student voice, and looking at the values, principles and practices that underpin their success. Great to see so many and varied benefits that schools are seeing. There’s a full report to be issued in a few weeks.

Thank you to the schools that took part, and for the Children’s Commissioner for getting us in to do such a great project!

Greg

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New addition to the involver team:

Nice, huh?

 

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Newsletter 9: Weddings, MPs and Smart School Councils

Hello from involver – newsletter number 9

Sorry there was no newsletter last month but we got a bit distracted by Asher’s wedding. We promise it won’t happen again (at least until Greg gets married).

Resource: Get a politician in to your school
This free resource from the Hansard Society shows you how to get the most out of bringing an MP or Peer in to your school. There are also tips for how to get them there in the first place. Order your copy here:
http://www.hansardsociety.org.uk/blogs/citizenship_education/archive/2010/10/28/2779.aspx

Resource: Young people’s governance in schools
A new short guide from Participation Works that looks full of useful information for those involved in running schools. You can buy a copy here:
http://www.participationworks.org.uk/resources/how-to-involve-children-and-young-people-in-school-governance

Video: Challenging educational paradigms through student voice
Project REAL is the way in which this school in Australia is trying to reassess the way they teach and learn. These two videos from the students explain how they’re doing it and why they feel it’s important. Really worth a watch:
http://ihsprojectreal.wordpress.com/

Research: Student voice reading list
We met with ARK last week and they wanted us to persuade them that student voice should be central to the school’s they’re setting up in Uganda. We created this list of research on the subject for them. What have we missed?
http://involver.org.uk/2011/07/student-voice-reading-list/

Community: Smart School Councils help each other out
The Smart School Councils Community is a new charity we’re setting up along with students and teachers from 15 founder schools. It will be free for anyone to join and share good practice on how to involve your whole school in student voice. Watch this space:
http://www.smartschoolcouncils.org.uk

Awards: John Bercow awards best school council projects
Body image, anti-vandalism, LGBT sensitivity, classroom pets and Ecostars projects were selected by the Speaker of the House of Commons (and friends) as the winners of the Speaker’s School Council Awards 2011. We had a great time helping out at the ceremony:
http://involver.org.uk/2011/07/a-fun-day-at-the-speakers-school-council-awards/

And now we’re off to help judge Haringey Junior Citizens Debate, which should be great fun,

Greg and Asher

http://twitter.com/doingdemocracy
http://facebook.com/involver.org.uk

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How running a school like a factory can improve student voice

Much has been said about the fact that our schools are based on a factory production model and how counter-productive that is – best explained by Sir Ken Robinson in this great video:

This of course ignores that fact that factories don’t all run in the same way. A school we came across as part of our research in to good practice on student voice – which we were carrying out for the for the Office of the Children’s Commissioner – uses the insight of industrialist W. Edwards Deming to help them remodel their school.

I must admit before visiting Matthew Moss High School in Rochdale I’d never heard of Deming, but something the deputy headteacher said to me about him made me look him up and I’ve been really taken with what I found out:

Deming says, ‘97 per cent of people want to do a brilliant job, let them. Don’t build systems for the three per cent and make the 97 per cent follow them. You get no risk, no creativity, no nothing.’

Deming wasn’t talking about schools, he was helping Japan to build factories after the Second World War. So how strange that this seems to describe exactly what most schools in England in the 21st Century do. Where school policies and organisations are based on the assumption that you should trust people to want to do the best for themselves and each other you actually get more creativity, more action and better results.

Matthew Moss is trying to learn from what made Japanese industry the envy of the world in the second half of the last century and apply it to a school. Having now read a little on Deming, I can see how his 14 key principles could be really instructive for all schools to consider:

  1. Constancy of purpose: Create constancy of purpose for continual improvement of products and service to society, allocating resources to provide for long range needs rather than only short term profitability, with a plan to become competitive, to stay in business, and to provide jobs.
  2. The new philosophy: Adopt the new philosophy. We are in a new economic age, created in Japan. We can no longer live with commonly accepted levels of delays, mistakes, defective materials and defective workmanship. Transformation of Western management style is necessary to halt the continued decline of business and industry.
  3. Cease dependence on mass inspection: Eliminate the need for mass inspection as the way of life to achieve quality by building quality into the product in the first place. Require statistical evidence of built in quality in both manufacturing and purchasing functions.
  4. End lowest tender contracts: End the practice of awarding business solely on the basis of price tag. Instead require meaningful measures of quality along with price. Reduce the number of suppliers for the same item by eliminating those that do not qualify with statistical and other evidence of quality. The aim is to minimize total cost, not merely initial cost, by minimizing variation. This may be achieved by moving toward a single supplier for any one item, on a long term relationship of loyalty and trust. Purchasing managers have a new job, and must learn it.
    5. W. Edwards Deming
    W. Edwards Deming
  5. Improve every process: Improve constantly and forever every process for planning, production, and service. Search continually for problems in order to improve every activity in the company, to improve quality and productivity, and thus to constantly decrease costs. Institute innovation and constant improvement of product, service, and process. It is management’s job to work continually on the system (design, incoming materials, maintenance, improvement of machines, supervision, training, retraining).
  6. Institute training on the job: Institute modern methods of training on the job for all, including management, to make better use of every employee. New skills are required to keep up with changes in materials, methods, product and service design, machinery, techniques, and service.
  7. Institute leadership: Adopt and institute leadership aimed at helping people do a better job. The responsibility of managers and supervisors must be changed from sheer numbers to quality. Improvement of quality will automatically improve productivity. Management must ensure that immediate action is taken on reports of inherited defects, maintenance requirements, poor tools, fuzzy operational definitions, and all conditions detrimental to quality.
  8. Drive out fear: Encourage effective two way communication and other means to drive out fear throughout the organization so that everybody may work effectively and more productively for the company.
  9. Break down barriers: Break down barriers between departments and staff areas. People in different areas, such as Leasing, Maintenance, Administration, must work in teams to tackle problems that may be encountered with products or service.
  10. Eliminate exhortations: Eliminate the use of slogans, posters and exhortations for the work force, demanding Zero Defects and new levels of productivity, without providing methods. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships; the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system, and thus lie beyond the power of the work force.
  11. Eliminate arbitrary numerical targets: Eliminate work standards that prescribe quotas for the work force and numerical goals for people in management. Substitute aids and helpful leadership in order to achieve continual improvement of quality and productivity.
  12. Permit pride of workmanship: Remove the barriers that rob hourly workers, and people in management, of their right to pride of workmanship. This implies, among other things, abolition of the annual merit rating (appraisal of performance) and of Management by Objective. Again, the responsibility of managers, supervisors, foremen must be changed from sheer numbers to quality.
  13. Encourage education: Institute a vigorous program of education, and encourage self improvement for everyone. What an organization needs is not just good people; it needs people that are improving with education. Advances in competitive position will have their roots in knowledge.
  14. Top management commitment and action: Clearly define top management’s permanent commitment to ever improving quality and productivity, and their obligation to implement all of these principles. Indeed, it is not enough that top management commit themselves for life to quality and productivity. They must know what it is that they are committed to-that is, what they must do. Create a structure in top management that will push every day on the preceding 13 Points, and take action in order to accomplish the transformation. Support is not enough: action is required!

From http://www.qualityregister.co.uk/14principles.html
It seems to me and to Matthew Moss that running throughout this way of structuring an organisation is listening to and involving everyone in the process. Trusting them to want to do the best and supporting them to do it. This is incredibly powerful for student voice because it sets it up as an essential part of the system, not a counterbalance to a staff-led hierarchy.
Do you agree? Can education learn anything from Deming? Can you see any of these principles working in your school?

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Strengthen Citizenship in the National Curriculum – a personal response

So today is the last day to respond to the National Curriculum Review Consultation.

involver’s primary interest in this is the threat to Citizenship. To this end we’ve been founding members of Democratic Life and I’ve just used their excellent form to submit a personal response to the consultation (we’re submitting an organisational one too).

Please do go and give your own response too (Democratic Life have even filled out some answers for you too if you just want to adapt them): http://www.democraticlife.org.uk/curriculum-review/curriculum-review-response-form/

I thought I’d put it up here in case it might serve as inspiration to anyone.

If you are responding as an individual, please describe yourself

I am a primary school governor and a parent with a child starting primary school in September. I am also an educational consultant with an interest in promoting political and active democratic education in schools.

Should citizenship be a National Curriculum subject, and if so at what key stages?

Yes, I believe there is a place for citizenship at all levels of schooling. A functioning democracy needs citizens who understand the political system, how they can use it to effect change and how they can change the system.

We do not become citizens at 18, we are citizens from birth.

What does citizenship education bring to the National Curriculum?

State education is about ensuring that everyone can play an active part in the society, this needs to cover the political and social spheres as well as economic and cultural.

Unfortunately most families do not understand well enough the links and boundaries between parish, local, regional, national and European branches of government to explain them to an adult, let alone a child. How many letters do MPs get every week about pot-holes? Formal education has a key role to play here in renewing our democracy.

Whilst the specific ins and outs of the town hall, Westminster and Brussels may be too much for a 7 year-old, learning the underlying principles is not. Most (over 90%) will have a school council, but could any of them tell you if it was democratic? Now, pull that forward, how many 27 year-olds can explain to you which is more democratic, ‘First Past the Post’ or the ‘Alternative Vote’?

What areas of knowledge does the citizenship curriculum cover?

Citizenship teaches how our current political structures work. Those things that have a direct impact on the schools the pupils go to, the services they use and the streets they live on.

It teaches them their rights are how these are linked to responsibilities.

It places British society in an international context; explaining the rights and privileges that we enjoy and making people aware that these are not enjoyed universally.

Furthermore it encourages deep learning of all of these by getting pupils to apply them in a real-world context. This adds skills and agency to the knowledge.

How is citizenship education best delivered in schools?

Whilst any good school will have the principles and values of citizenship embedded in everything it does, it is incredibly difficult to teach the knowledge in this way.

For this reason I believe it should be a discrete subject.

It also needs properly trained and motivated teachers who have graduated in politics or a related subject. Many of the best citizenship teachers have spent time in other professions before entering teaching and so bring additional skills and knowledge to the classroom. This is to be encouraged.

In many cases where citizenship is being poorly delivered it is because it has been given to a non-specialist as an ‘add-on’ responsibility. Encouraging pupils to get a qualification as part of the course seems to help schools to put more weight in to the teaching of the subject.

I believe these views are all backed up by Ofsted’s findings.

What is citizenship education’s international standing? How do English pupils compare internationally in their civic and citizenship knowledge?

I think Democratic Life have summed this up very well:

Citizenship education is an internationally recognised and respected subject. The recent IEA International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) shows that 20 out of 38 countries surveyed include a specific subject for civic or citizenship education in their national curricula. Finland, the country who tops the international comparison tables for reading and science in PISA 2009, also had the highest country civic knowledge scores (along with Denmark). England was 13th in the ICCS civic knowledge country scores and 24th (or last) amongst European countries in civic knowledge of the European Union, its institutions, laws and policies. England needs a world class National Curriculum, that includes robust citizenship education and high quality citizenship teaching to ensure our students can compete with the best in the world.

How can the Government improve pupils’ civic and citizenship knowledge and their attitudes towards participation in society?

By having citizenship as a discrete subject at secondary school and as a strand in the curriculum at primary.

By ensuring that citizenship education combines knowledge of civics with active application of that knowledge to develop the skills and passion for civic participation.

By ensuring that those teaching or leading the teaching of citizenship are well-trained experts in the subject.

Again, please do go and give your own response too: http://www.democraticlife.org.uk/curriculum-review/curriculum-review-response-form/