Tag: guidance

Categories
involver blog Resources

Student voice policy – 5 quick tips

An email I received from a teacher friend last week (name and school removed to avoid blushes):

hey

I’m revamping my department handbook and I’m at the policy section, i’d really like an amazing students voice policy but I know we are very medicore at it so

HELP

________________________________

??? ???
Head of Drama

Large London Comprehensive

My response:

KISS in concert Boston 2004
KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid - I know the picture's not that relevant, but it might help you remember the maxim.

Keep it simple. No more than a couple of sentences on each.

  1. Why is student voice important to us (staff and students)?
  2. What does this mean in our work (what influence will students have in decision-making and T&L)?
  3. What does this look like (list any particular activities that will take place – evaluations, students as teachers, etc.)
  4. How will we measure success (what are your success criteria, how and when will you measure them)?
  5. When and how will you review this policy?

So the whole thing should be no more than a page in your handbook.
I would obviously suggest you work on all of these questions with your staff and students.  A very simple way to do this would be to write down your first thoughts an d give them to groups of students and your staff to comment on.  This could be done online using Google Docs so people could see how others are updating it and many people can work on it at once.

Regards,

Asher

I think this would stand pretty well for writing a new policy for most things. What do you think?

Categories
involver blog Newsletters

Newsletter 3: Why bother, audit, training and fantasy football

Hello from involver: Newsletter number 3!

The summer break is almost upon us (or already here, depending on where in the UK you are), so we hope you’ve had a great year!

Here’s a round up of what we’ve been up to over the last month:

Blog: School councils and student voice: why bother?
Greg says, ‘I’m working from Scotland for most of this week, which meant a very long eight hour train journey! After a double espresso, I was feeling a bit reflective about some of the things that we’re doing with involver and why we’ve been doing them.’ Here are his thoughts:
http://involver.org.uk/2010/07/school-councils-and-student-voice-why-bother/

Training: Making your school council READY!
Lots of schools are thinking about how they can improve their school council or student voice next year – we can help you make it READY (yes, that’s an acronym, have a look here if you want to know what for):
http://involver.org.uk/2010/07/school-council-training-get-in-touch/

Resource: Great set of student voice resources from Australia
Asher came across this series of presentations and supporting resources, which was created by Nick Rate, a trainer from Australia. He’s recorded it all so the people he supports in far flung places down under can access them, but of course it means we all can, we love the internet:
http://www.jogtheweb.com/run/AlhYPd3PMcUd/Student-Voice

Video: Make Your Voice Heard: Discover Democratic Education
A great video from the States about why ‘doing democracy’ in schools is so important. It is included in the set above, but worth a special mention:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_LbZ3XcfK4

Project: Speaker’s School Council Awards 2011
After a hugely successful opening year, you can now register your interest in the Speakers School Council Awards 2011. It’s a great way to get your achievements recognised, so to get involved, hop over to:
http://www.speakersschoolcouncil.org

Evaluation: Student voice/school council progress this year?
How have you been getting on with student voice, this year? It’s not easy to get right, and it still takes work and support even when it’s a success. We’ve built a very short audit tool to help you reflect. Fill it out and we’ll even provide you with personalised feedback and ideas if you want us to:
http://involver.org.uk/participate/simple-student-voice-audit/

Network: A new Student Voice and School council Linkedin group
For those of you that use Linkedin (for those who don’t: it’s kind of like a professional Facebook), we’ve set up a group to connect and inform people about student voice and school councils. We’re still finding our way around LinkedIn, but our teacher friends tell us it’s very useful. So take a look, and join at: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=3089339

Networking-fun: Fantasy Democraball!
We’ve set up a fantasy football mini-league for our friends, colleagues and contacts, so please join and invite oithers.  You don’t need to know anything about football, just how to add up to £100,000,000. It’s a head-to-head league, so each game you’ll be playing against another person from the citizenship/student voice/youth democracy world (your skill in beating them will be a good ice-breaker topic for when you next meet them at a conference). It’s free to sign up. Once you’ve picked your team use this code to join the ‘Democraball!’ league: 116742-35727
http://fantasy.premierleague.com

So have a great summer!

And remember, if you want to get in touch about anything we’re up to, then please email us at info@involver.org.uk. We’re also always keen to hear about and share good practice, new resources or developments in student voice.

Greg and Asher @ involver

Categories
involver blog

School council training – get in touch!

Lots of schools are beginning to think about training their school council, or student voice groups, for next academic year.

If you want to make your student voice READY, then get in touch! You can read more about our training here.

It might be two days training to breathe new life into your tired school council, a staff INSET on student voice, or a half day workshop supporting students to be on an interview panel. Whatever it is, all of our training aims to make student voice:

Real, Everyone, Active, Democratic, Youth-led

Categories
involver blog Resources

Common school council issues – with solutions!

I posted yesterday about a number of student voice ideas and issues that came up at a training session I ran recently. It seemed a bit remiss to leave those issues just hanging there, we are in the business of (helping you) solve those kinds of problems after all. Luckily I took some photos last week at the training I ran for Wolverhampton’s primary school council co-ordinators where we were looking at what solutions they might use for just some of these problems.

Apologies for the rather garish colours but they actually make the images more readable (honestly). If any of them are too small to read, click on them and you’ll be able to see a larger version. These are the issues we looked at:

Meetings have gone flat
What can we do if our meetings have gone flat?

Need more support from senior staff
What can I do if I'm not getting the support I need from senior staff (e.g. given time and resources to run things)?

How to build on this year's success
Things have gone well this year, how do we make sure we don't lose that?

No time for feedback
What can we do if class teachers don't give reps time to feedback?

How to get better motivated people involved
The people on the school council aren't great at getting things done, what can we do?

Not being treated seriously by staff
What can I do if other staff in the school don't give the school council the importance it deserves/needs?
Categories
involver blog Resources

School council ideas and student voice issues

Just before half term I ran a training course for ASCL (the Association of School and College Leaders), as part of this we collected together a wide variety of student voice activities that the participants had come across. We also highlighted a number of issues that could come up in trying to implement these schemes.

I thought this was a great collection so I’m sharing them with you here.  Please add any other ideas in the comments and I’ll add them to the mindmap.

To see the whole mindmap (it’s pretty large) click on  expand mind map (in the middle at the top), this will collapse all the levels. Then click on the little plus signs on each ‘node’ to expand it. The whole map can be dragged around too. (If this is just too complicated there’s a list version underneath)

[iframe http://mind42.com/pub/mindmap?mid=ca7480b6-1c1e-4967-9747-f328bb4b3b09 100% 500px]

To see the whole mindmap (it’s pretty large) click on  expand mind map (in the middle at the top), this will collapse all the levels. Then click on the little plus signs on each ‘node’ to expand it. The whole map can be dragged around too. (If this is just too complicated there’s a list version underneath)


Student Voice Ideas and Issues

  • + –
    Behaviour

    • + –
      Support

      • Conflict resolution
      • Target setting
      • Buddies
    • + –
      Monitoring/enforcement

      • Student Panel
      • Prefect System
      • Prefect system based on school council
      • ‘Self Government’ responsible for rules
    • + –
      Policy-making

      • Code of Conduct
      • Setting class groundrules
      • Linking local community to school council to deal with after school issues
      • Head boy/girl oversee prefect system
      • Rewards and sanctions group
  • + –
    Issues

    • + –
      Due to structure

      • Involving all students
      • Power
      • Money
      • Time
      • Influence
      • Succession
    • + –
      Fears

      • Is it democratic?
      • Censorship required?
      • Getting a representative group
      • Getting responses completed and handed back
      • Pleasing everyone
      • Unsupportive colleagues
    • + –
      Individuals’ ability

      • + –
        Lack of training

        • Staff
        • Students
      • Making decsions
      • Planning issues
      • Confidentiality
      • Realistic/appropriate ideas
    • + –
      Perception issues

      • Seen negatively by other students
      • Pupils not on council/identified by badges, ties, etc. might feel they have less influence
      • Getting people to recognise the importance
  • + –
    Teaching and Learning

    • Pupil interview panels
    • Students to reseacrh attitudes to learning
    • + –
      Peer support

      • Peer assessment
      • Peer mentoring
      • Peer tutoring (reluctant readers)
      • Student academic mentors
    • + –
      Formal student evaluation

      • Student SEF
      • Faculty reviews
      • Insted (student Ofsted)
      • Lesson observations by student council
      • Reviews
      • Student observers
      • Students observing rooms focussing on noticeboards and levelled work
    • + –
      Informal student evaluation

      • Learning walks
      • Discussion on T&L
    • + –
      Student planning and teaching

      • Students teaching G&T lessons
      • Numeracy, literacy and sports leaders
      • Curriculum planning
      • Ambassadors for different subject areas
      • Sports ambassadors
  • + –
    Environment

    • + –
      Eco

      • + –
        Reducing carbon footprint

        • Students approached governors and got £500 to kick off project
      • Campaign to use both sides of paper in ICT
      • + –
        Eco council

        • Huge electricity bill
        • School eco bag
        • Sustainability
        • Recycled stationery shop
        • Eco bags competition
    • + –
      Built environment

      • Surveys
      • Students designing toilets in BSF
      • Changing the building
      • Environmental group (outside spaces)
    • + –
      School environment

      • Sub-committees
      • New uniform put in place by school council
      • School improvement
      • House leaders recognised through their tie and jumpers
      • Fund raising for school council to meet objectives
  • + –
    Relationships

    • Appointments
    • + –
      Leaders wristbands

      • Community
      • Befriender
      • Attender
    • + –
      Fund raising activities

      • Enterprise
    • Anti-bullying (FAB)
    • Good Citizenship Awards
    • + –
      Peer mentoring

      • Bullying
      • Advisors
    • Student website
    • Council target setting using SMART targets to measure success
    • Creating a handbook for new migrant students
  • + –
    Other

    • Attending governors meetings
    • Student-led magazine
    • Tour guides
    • Representing the school at events
    • Students helping with SEF
    • Decorating toilets
    • Participatory budgeting
    • Student leadership
    • + –
      Major officials system

      • 1 vote per member of school
    • + –
      Charity decisions

      • Fund raising
    • + –
      Policy discussion

      • + –
        Anti-racism policy

        • How staff should deal with racism in class
    • Pupils running enrichment activities
    • + –
      Whole school celebrations

      • Black history month
    • E-safety
    • Uniform changes
    • Assemblies
    • School council
    • + –
      Anti-smoking campaign

      • Patches

Categories
involver blog

Participatory budgeting – the essence of student voice?

What’s your school’s ethos?

Most of the schools I meet use terms like ‘community’, ‘the school as a family’, ‘listening to and valuing all pupils’ and ’empowering learners’.

  • So how do you prove the ethos of your school?
  • Can you measure your school’s ethos?

Now those are a couple of tricky questions (not least grammatically). The answers I usually see are:

  • You could write it above the entrance as a motto/vision/mission statement.
  • Do a survey to feel if people feel ‘listened to/safe/happy/enlightened/self-actualised’ (okay, I haven’t actually heard either of the last two).
Participatory Budgeting toolkit by PB Unit
Participatory Budgeting toolkit by PB Unit

Yesterday Greg and I spent a fascinating few hours discussing something far more tangible, empowering and effective: participatory budgeting (now there’s a name to get the pulse racing!). We were at a meeting convened by the Participatory Budgeting Unit, Citizenship Foundation and ourselves and attended by several other organisations with a range of interests and experiences in the field.

The idea of participatory budgeting, as I see it, is simple:

You involve the people whose money is being spent in the decisions about how that money is spent. (Wikipedia goes into more detail, naturally)

So how does this relate to school ethos? Well, if you say you’re a school that listens to your pupils, how about listening to them on a proportion of your budget? Set a percentage, set some boundaries and a structure, listen and then act (even better, help them to act).

Like it or not money is essential to how a school works. If you really want to involve your whole school community in decision-making then that’s going to involve how money is spent. Make a statement. Involve the whole school in he process and let them see the outcomes.

This also gives you a yardstick by which to measure how you are progressing. The more trust grows between staff, students and governors; the more students learn about how the school runs; the more responsible they show themselves to be: the larger the percentage of the budget is that they help control.

Over the coming months we (the meeting organisers) intend to help produce tools and guidance to assist schools in involving all pupils in ‘PB’.