Our installment today comes from Dobronin village school. It is yet another great school council experience for us with a school council that is clearly working very well. I think the influence of CEDU and the process they have been through with the schools is evident. They have taken all of these schools on residentials and worked with them on problem-solving, negotation and teamwork and it really shows. I would love involver to be able to run something similar for schools in the UK.
Rather than me explaining Dobronin school council to you, this time we have this poster made by last year’s school council so they can do it in their own words.
You can read more about their School Parliament on their website, including a list of their achievements and photos from their residential event.
After the meeting the teachers from the other schools commented on how little the teachers from Dobronin had said in the meeting and how they had put their hands up to speak and waited to be asked like the students. The teachers from Dobronin felt this was very important as it stopped the students always looking to them for answers. We then had a very interesting discussion on how careful teachers have to be to not unduly influence the opinion of the school council. A school council coordinator pointed out that this can be an even bigger problem in class meetings. So how do you ensure that the teacher does not sway the opinions being aired?
The screen at the top of the photo was used to display images of the topics being discussed when appropriate, the rest of the time the minutes were displayed there as they were typed up.
Today we’re sitting in Masarova School in Brno, the Czech Republic’s second city. Again we’ve been lucky to witness an excellent school council meeting, albeit one that was very different to the one we saw yesterday.
This meeting was more formal, not least in the room layout,but there was still a good deal of respect and understanding between the pupils. Again, the range of issues they covered was impressive and would ring bells for UK school councils: communication with the whole school, school dinners, fundraising, the school council’s budget and how to get more teachers involved with the school council.
There were a few things that stood out to us as useful ideas that other school councils could use:
Have the minutes displayed as they are being typed. This allows everyone to see that they are being recorded accurately and see that an action plan has been agreed – if you use action-focused minutes.
The three chairpeople supported one another well and ensured that virtually everyone (22 out of 24 school councillors) contributed during the meeting.
Have people in supporting roles. There were three chairs and two secretaries. One person took the lead as each but the others helped out and ensured that everyone was seen and all notes were taken down.
Don’t just choose the oldest students to chair. In this school the three chairs seemed to be some of the youngest people in the meeting, but they were enthusiastic and did an excellent job of moving the discussions along.
Have large name badges for everyone in the room. All teachers and students had these and it meant the secretaries could easily record who was doing what.
Print out the minutes at the end of the meeting to give to everyone so they know what was discussed and what their action points are.
The two secretaries typed up the minutes as the meeting was going and they were projected on to a screen that everyone could see. At the end of the meeting they printed out the minutes for all the school councillors.
The noticeboard at the front entrance, showing what the school council is working on and what it has achieved.
Our first stop, at Krnov School, was a real treat. The first thing we saw when we came through the front door was a ‘School Parliament’ (school council) noticeboard laying out what the Parliament is working on now and what it has done recently. As we explored later we saw there were two more noticeboards for the Parliament, one outside the headteacher’s office and the other outside the music room where they meet. The locations of the these boards makes a clear statement about the status of the Parliament in the school. They have named their school council ‘Heart of the School’, which has the same connotations in Czech as it does in English.
The school council meeting we got to see was for the upper school (students aged 11-15). The school has students from age 6-15 and they split their school council in two, one for the lower school and one for the upper school. The meeting we saw was really impressive: decisions were made, action was decided upon and fun was had. I’ll try to give you a sense of what this looked like and how it was achieved.
The upper school council with their logo in the background.
The council arrived and seated themselves in a circle sitting on drums/stools students had decorated. One of the older students ran through each of the classes to check that all the representatives were there.
The chair, another of the older students, checked up that the actions agreed at the last meeting had been completed and they moved on to the first discussion. This was about taking photos of the school council to display in the school and use on a Christmas card. After listening to a few points of view it was clear that there was general agreement so the chair moved to a vote. This was carried and the chair asked for a volunteer to ensure that the action was carried out.
All of the above happened in the first two minutes of the meeting. It seemed very informal, but incredibly effective. We were told by the students that the meeting was pretty typical and later by their teachers that these students are a fair cross-section of the school in terms of academic ability and interests. I’m still trying to work out what enabled them to work so well together.
Working in small teams with mixed ages.
After discussions about the school council website, plans for the play space outside the school the meeting came to a discussion about a new rewards system. At this point the school council co-ordinator, who had so far taken a back seat, took over. She split the meeting into mixed groups fo 4 or five and asked each group to come up with five ideas for why people should be rewarded by the school council. After a few minutes of discussion she paired up groups and asked them to get their two sets of five ideas down to five between them. The groups then announced their ideas and the chair wrote them up on the whiteboard, omitting any duplicates. Whilst this was happening the teacher handed each school councillor three stickers. They were to use these to vote between the options on the whiteboard. In this way a complex decision was taking democratically and quickly.
Voting on options
After this the teacher reminded the students of a game they had played at the previous few meetings. She told them they had ten minutes to plan how to complete it this time – they’d failed on their previous attempts. When the ten minutes was up – and the students had failed again – the teacher got them to reflect on their planning and the way they had worked together. They came up with some useful ideas which she helped them apply to their school council. The student’s comment that I liked the most was, “we did discuss it and made a plan, but we all just talked to our friends, we didn’t make a plan all together.”
The aim of the game was to get people from being in age order to alphabetical order without any of them stepping outside the lines.
It was clear that although they weren’t successful at completing the challenge those kinds of discussions and games had a real impact on how they were able to work together as a school council. It was a real honour to see them work.
This week Greg and I are out in the Czech Republic again, working with our friends and partners CEDU (English pages: http://cedu.cz/en). This time it’s a bit different though as rather than having teachers and headteachers come to us in Prague, we’re going on a tour of schools right across the Czech Republic.
We set off from Prague this afternoon; our first stop is in Krnow, then we go on to Brno, then Dobronín and end up in Dolní Žandov on Friday.
We’re really excited and we hope to learn a lot more about how student voice works in Czech schools. We’ll do a blog post each day to tell you about what we’ve learnt, so check back tomorrow.
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.
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.
We’ve spent quite a big chunk of this year working on a youth engagement guide for social housing providers with Peabody, Home Group, CBHA and CDHT.
That’s a fancy way of saying that we’ve been collecting loads of good hints and tips to help young people who live in houses owned by the council or housing associations to get more involved in their community.
We’ve been working closely with the Our Say Our Way partners and visited lots of young tenants and staff on estates across the country. It’s been brilliant to work with young people outside of schools. Especially since it has helped us to learn about participation in a slightly different setting from what we’re used to.
