This is a question that I am sure many schools struggle with, and I’d be lying if I said Little Heath hadn’t faced this problem over the years as well. The answer to this question can be the key to success in student voice.
It might be that the attendance at your school council is dwindling, or the uptake for your new peer mentoring scheme is low, or maybe you are struggling to keep your student voice “cool”. I don’t claim to have a definitive answer but I hope to offer some practical advice that you may find useful.
Publicise it! Ensure that the students know what is going on, what your plans are and how they can be involved. Go into assemblies once every half term, produce a mini newsletter, create posters and display boards around school, go into their tutor times, send letters home. You name it, it’s possible. But most crucially get out and speak to them. Chat with them about what student voice is, what activities are available, get them to share their thoughts with you, get their advice.
Be inclusive. Don’t hand pick the good students or reject the more challenging ones when they volunteer. Each one has something to offer. It is important to go out to your students as well as expecting them to come to you. At Little Heath, our Student Voice Leaders (a small group of senior students who each take a lead on an area of Student Voice) regularly go into tutor groups to chat informally to students about their lessons and other areas of school life, but also to share with them what is going on in the student voice world.
One of the greatest, and most effective, outcomes of student voice is that students feel valued. Ensure that everyone knows that your school council, for example, is there, not just because you have to have one but because you want to hear what your students have to say. Show them that their work has impact, that it makes a difference and that it can be rewarding. This gives students a sense of ownership and that their school council is their school council.
Informal structure as well as formal structure can work. Elections are great but don’t always work for everyone. Having an informal place where suggestions can be made and students can show an interest is also really helpful. This can either be a place that allows students to drop in and share ideas with you or it might even be a suggestion box that is checked regularly.
These are just a few ideas but I hope that in some way they are helpful to you.
Alison,
Student Voice Coordinator
Little Heath School
This is part two of a blog on Little Heath’s Student Voice conference. You can read the first part here. This concentrated on the older students who were organising the conference, and the adults that supported them.
This second part will look at the experience of some of the younger pupils who are more recently involved with student voice. Let’s focus on student voice in learning since it’s one of the areas that the school does amazingly well. This centres around the STARs project – Students as Researchers.
The STARs (students as researchers) project is a key part of student voice in Little Heath. It’s designed to give the students an influence in their learning and school-life. Importantly, this isn’t based on whim, but research. Even more importantly, this research is student-led.
This first group looked at the types of homework that students liked most. Lots of students were complaining about their homework so they worked on a questionnaire to send out to pupils. The results were presented to Governors and SLT.
Here’s two year 9 students telling us about their STARs project. As opposed to the first group, this project focuses on classroom teaching. It looks at specific subjects: English, History and ICT in years 7 and 8. A crucial area to look at, and some very useful findings:
This group looked at the help that is available for students within the school. Here’s a member of the group talking us through the teacher questionnaire that they organised, and what will happen to their ideas:
Members of the STARs team can get involved year after year. These two members led a successful project last year, and are doing a first plan for their anti-bullying project this year:
Lots of the learning from the STARs project goes into a booklet which is given out to the school to publicise their work. Here’s the team in charge of making it:
Ongoing reflections on Homework:
Year 7 pupils (I think) talking us through their planner/homework diary/timetable.
They’re encouraged to reflect on what they’ve learnt and their homework, if there was too much or if they really enjoyed it. Teachers would then look at this. It’s a simple but good way to encourage reflection on learning and start a conversation with teachers.
Student voice in school planning:
Year 7 pupils on the Buildings and Environment group looking at how to improve this aspect of their school. They’re starting point is how they would make their school into the ‘dream school’ and they’re drawing a big map. They’re clearly getting a lot from approaching this in a visual way.
Key quote ‘it makes it come to life’
So that’s a taster of some of the great work being worked on by the younger pupils at Little Heath. The range of student voice work is really amazing, and if you’re interested, take a look at my original post from last year’s conference for a bit of analysis into why it works so well.
I thought I’d write a blog that reflected on what we saw and learnt last year. It’s split into two parts because I took LOADS of videos.
So the ‘building blocks’ for success in Little Heath are still the same and still very apparent. Pupils feel open – and are supported by teachers and other pupils – to suggest ideas (good or bad!), there’s a variety of ways for students to get involved, and the support from staff is strong. In terms of staff support, the school has managed to build on what they provided last year.
Mr Linz (Student Voice Coordinator) is now expertly supported by Alison, the new Student Voice Assistant. Last year, Alison was a pupil at the school, but this year she’s a paid member of staff. It’s her job to support Mr Linz, and use her experience as a student to get lots of people involved and improve the school.
She’s very kindly writing a blog for us which you can read here and here. It’s really clear from how the students describe them that they make a great team and helps the school to build on the success that they’ve had. Well done!
As usual, I took some videos of some of the work that the school is doing. You’ll have to excuse my video skills.
First off, we have Bailey, a year 8 student who I’d talked to last year. This year Bailey was really clear on the role that the school’s strong student voice ethos had played in helping him and others. He’s got some great advice on helping shy pupils to get involved. This is something that sits at the heart of what we’re trying to do as an organisation, and it’s great to see Bailey describe this in such a powerful way:
Some great stuff from Jack in Year 11 telling us about the day, and the skills he learnt as a Student Voice Leader. He also stresses the role of a passionate student voice coordinator to support everyone:
Here’s Dalton, from Year 12. He’s got a rather fetching shirt, and is on the buildings committee and helps out on travel to and from school. Back in year 9, he was part of the selection panel to appoint a new head teacher. Key quote ‘being a student voice leader is not all plain-sailing‘. Here his thoughts below:
It’s also important to look at the role of other staff supporting student voice, here’s Ms. Broadhead and Mr. Naylor – a Teaching Assistant at the school – talking about their experience. As a NQT, Ms. Broadhead’s got some interesting reflections on the lip service that many schools pay to student voice:
Here’s Lucy and Daniela talking about the support that older pupils give to year sevens. It’s called the SMILE group, and shows how peer mentoring is important to the school:
Finally for part 1, here’s a short video of Tom working with a group of year 8s. We saw Tom last year explaining what was happening at the conference. I’m sure he won’t mind me saying he was a bit nervous! This year, he’s expertly leading a group on the importance of courage as a leader, and what that means. Great stuff!
In part two, I’ll be talking to more of the younger pupils at the school. Stay tuned and thanks again to Little Heath for inviting me along.
One of the main issues that many school councils face is that they don’t include enough students. This often leaves the rest of the school pretty uninterested in what the school council are doing.
In trying to overcome this, here’s Asher giving a few ideas for you on how to think about the traditional school council structure differently.
Hope it’s useful, and that you like the video blog. We’d love to hear what you think, or some ideas on what’s worked for you.
Essentially they pull out a few examples of bad or questionable practice of involving pupils in the interview process and from there draw the conclusion that pupils shouldn’t be listened to. So the NASUWT has found a few examples of where schools appear to have managed the process badly and so want to ban the process completely. I’m suggesting a different approach: get schools to manage the process well.
I’ve worked in many schools where they’ve found the process invaluable because pupils give them a different perspective on the candidates. Most of them use a process something like this:
Write down the process and responsibilities and share with all involved, including pupils and prospective candidates (i.e. put it in the application pack).
Get together a representative group of pupils, explain the process to them, including how much weight their views will be given. This maybe your school council or a group s/elected for this purpose, but here we’ll assume it’s the school council.
Get the school council members to go to other classes in the school (how many depends on the role being applied for, for a Head you may want them to go to all classes):
Discuss, ‘what makes a good Head/Deputy/Teacher/etc.?’
Each class should decide on the top 3 qualities/skills.
These should be recorded by the school council representative.
The school council should be given training on:
Confidentiality
Active listening
Open v. Closed questions
Leading questions
Questions candidates might ask
The school council then discusses:
What the other pupils have said makes a good Head/Deputy/Teacher/etc.?
They choose the most important of these.
What questions would you ask to find out if someone had each of these?
What sort of answers would be good or bad?
This list of questions is then drawn up along with a marking sheet for each of the questions/qualities.
Setting up the pupil panel:
The pupil panel is separate to the adult panel (ideally there should be no other adults in the room, where safeguarding good practice allows).
One student is nominated as the chair.
The pupil panel is not a ‘weeding out’ stage.
Candidates are encouraged to ask the pupil panel questions to ensure this is a two-way process.
As in formal interviews each candidate is asked the same set of questions. Each member of the pupil panel writes comments and marks on their marking sheet. After each candidate has left pupils discuss them and come to a joint conclusion. These are written down and passed to the adult interview panel.
The pupil panel meets with the adult interview panel so the adult panel can ask for clarification or explanation of the pupil panel’s findings.
The adult interview panel makes the decision on who to appoint. Giving whatever weight to the pupil’s views they feel it merits. If they wish to they can question the pupil panel on how they arrived at their decision.
The application process is evaluated so that it can be improved for next time:
Discussion with school council about how it went: did they ask the right types of questions; did they get the kinds of answers they were expecting, etc.?
Where possible, discussion with candidates about how they felt about the process.
The benefits you’ll get from involving pupils in the interview process:
A wider variety of perspectives on candidates.
Candidates get a different view on the school.
Pupils learn something about what makes a good teacher (and how hard it is to be one).
You might learn something about what pupils value in a good teacher (I’ve never once seen the answer, ‘a pushover’).
Pupils learn about how interviews work, useful knowledge when entering the work force.
A good starting point for relationships between pupils and a new teacher.
It says that your school has pupils as its focus and that’s what you expect of your staff too.
And here are a few other people’s views on the benefits of pupils’ involvement in the interview process:
Easter weekend was a very interesting time on the student voice front. At its Annual Conference, NASUWT said they were considering striking because student voice is being taken too far.
Here’s our statement on the subject:
‘Successful organisations always consider ‘culture fit’ when making any appointment. With schools, it is natural to do this is by involving young people in teacher appointments, with the appropriate support.
The attack on student voice we’ve seen by NASUWT and sections of the press is un-measured and misconceived. Education cannot return to the days of simple knowledge transfer between teacher and student. This traditional approach to learning will not equip young people to face the modern world.
Student voice, when approached in a considered and clear way, is the best way to help young people to be active, questioning and informed citizens. This is exactly what Britain needs in 2010’
Here are six misconceptions that the NASUWT, and the press, are making about student voice:
Misconception
The truth
Poor examples of student voice mean that the whole idea of student voice is a bad one
Just because student voice has had negative, and isolated, consequences in some schools, it doesn’t mean that the whole concept isn’t a good idea.
Poor practice in student voice is widespread
Thousands of schools across the country benefit from involving young people in important school decisions
Young people are to blame for bad examples of student voice
They aren’t, the process needs to be managed better by teachers (in a clear and considered way)
Young people on interview panels select who gets the job
Young people are having a say on who gets the job, from their perspective in the school.
Student voice is Government – imposed
Student voice has not been imposed externally, but grown organically.
Better student voice equals worse teacher voice
Schools that have effective student voice also have empowered, effective and vocal teachers
And here’s those misconceptions explained:
1. Poor examples of student voice mean that the whole idea of student voice is a bad one
‘the way many schools use student voice is “demeaning, embarrassing and humiliating” to teachers’
Chris Keates, General Secretary, NASUWT
NASUWT are right to be concerned about inappropriate practice with student voice. We’re concerned too, just like we’re concerned about anything that is inappropriate.
But those schools that have developed poor practice should be encouraged to approach student voice in a more considered and planned way, rather than not do it at all.
Just because student voice has had negative consequences in some schools, it doesn’t mean that the whole idea is a bad one.
2. Poor practice in student voice is widespread
NASUWT – the largest UK-wide teachers’ union – could only find around 200 examples of poor practice with student voice.
We’re in touch with thousands of schools across the country who benefit from involving young people in important school decisions. This is happening day in day out, and young people, schools and teachers are reaping the benefits. Better behaviour, more engagement with learning, improved school environment, the list goes on…
Interestingly, a number of involvers’ teacher friends even sent positive case studies to NASUWT when they contacted their members looking for bad examples. They received a stock reply saying ‘thank you for your case of the abuse of student voice’. We’d like to ask NASUWT – how many teachers replied citing positive examples of student voice? And what happened to them?
Even some of the so-called ‘poor’ case studies are really clutching at straws. Take a look at this example in the Daily Mail yesterday:
The aggrieved candidate for this job pointed out that the interview was conducted ‘very formally’. She also mentions two very reasonable questions that were asked by the young panel – one about her subject, and one about disruption.
This is hardly an example of poor practice, if the young panel were interested in that subject being taught well, and without any interruptions from badly behaved members of the class. How can we object to that? And did the candidate feel aggrieved because she didn’t get the job?
3. Young people are to blame for bad examples of student voice
Young people are not evil!
If they say something inappropriate in a lesson observation, that’s because that lesson observation hasn’t been planned properly. If they ask something inappropriate in a teacher interview, that’s because nobody has gone through the questions with them beforehand.
If they give inappropriate feedback in an interview, that’s because they’ve not been trained on how to construct feedback in a diplomatic way. Just like for adults.
Hardly rocket science!
4. That young people on interview panels select who gets the job
Young people are not the ones deciding who gets the job. They are having a say on it, and offering an opinion from a different perspective. The school staff and Governors of the school still have the final say, are still legally responsible, and are influenced by young people’s views to an extent that they choose.
The decision making process needs to be made clear to the candidate (which has given rise to some of the problems we’ve seen highlighted in the press).
Student voice, when used in this way, takes advantage of the educational opportunity that being on an interview panel presents. It links well with work-related learning, and careers advice – why not use that opportunity?
5. Student voice is Government – imposed
‘a Government scheme called Student voice’
Melanie Phillips, Daily Mail
Student voice has not been forced on schools by this, or any, Government.
Student voice has come from schools because they know it’s a good idea. It has taken root in schools because many teachers realise the need to prepare their students for adult life in more sophisticated ways. It has not been imposed externally, but grown organically.
Schools that see the benefits of involving young people in their education every single day, with the appropriate support. It’s also supported with a range of academic research – here’s a few links:
The Labour government has supported to schools, as part of the Children’s Plan, with this – but encourages them to do so in a way that works for them.
It’s also far more than just teacher appointments, and lesson observations – but young people being involved in most aspects of the work of the school!
‘Student Voice scheme is not being abused. It is itself an abuse of education by drastically confusing the respective roles of teacher and pupil. This grotesque approach has not descended out of a clear blue sky. More profoundly and devastatingly, for several decades the entire education establishment has gone along with the benighted belief that pupils should usurp the authority of teachers in the classroom itself’ Melanie Phillips, Daily Mail
Wow. Go Melanie.
Both teachers and young people want to go to/work in a stimulating and effective institution. Student voice helps those two groups to work together to do just that.
Schools that have effective student voice also have empowered, effective and vocal teachers. The two are not mutually exclusive. Student voice is not about ‘pupil power’, but about a school’s ethos and culture, and young people benefit when they are part of it.
________
We’ll be writing to the NASUWT to suggest a more measured approach this week.
