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.
The key issue for school councils is how they involve the whole student body. Not just once a year when representatives are voted on, but on an on-going basis, throughout the year.
For me the core of the answer is in class meetings. Through these every student in the school can be listened to, given a chance to speak and become involved. Not all will want to, and many won’t very often, but the fact that it happens regularly, for everyone makes a huge difference. It is clear that the school (and the school council) are there for you when you need it, and is actively trying to involve you.
Transferring responsibility in secondaries
In secondary schools having these meetings is often seen to be harder than in primaries. The timetable is more prescribed, students move around and swap groups during the day, and so on. Last week when this issue arose at a training session I asked about the class meetings in the teacher’s school. He said that they had got rid of them because they couldn’t rely on the 72 form tutors to run them and pass on the messages. I’ve heard this from so many schools and it makes me sad to think about what this says to the students about how much their form tutors value their opinions. It raises questions of management too, but we’ll leave that to another time.
To me it seems that this is a problem that could be avoided. This shouldn’t be the teachers’ responsibility, it should be the class reps’. They should each have a simple page to assist them to run a class meeting. It lists decisions made, questions to be asked and a space for raising new issues. This makes sure that every class in the school is involved in the discussions of the school council. All the teacher needs to do is ensure that every other Friday 15 minutes of form time is given over to the class rep (as stated in the school council policy).
So I suggested this to the delegates at the training event. They liked the idea and of course asked whether I had a template for this. “Of course,” I white-lied, “I’ll send it out to you all next week.” So this morning I transferred that template from my head to the computer.
Free template
You can download a PDF or a Word version below. There are instructions for the class rep on the sheet itself. Instructions on how to fill it out are at the bottom of this page.
I would suggest you take the Word version and then you can type directly in to it. This is how it needs to be filled out (I say ‘school council’ below but it could be any meeting that is being reported back from, such as a year or house council):
In Section 1 you should put the decisions that were taken at the school council. Keep it succinct but clear, as the rep will just read this section out.
You should just be able to copy the ‘Issue’ from your minutes.
The ‘Action/Decision’ should also be from your minutes, so wherever possible it should be an action: WHO is going to do WHAT by WHEN.
The ‘Reason’ is where you can add some explanation. For example, ‘There was general agreement on this from across the school’; ‘There isn’t the money to do this at this time’
In Section 2 you should write the question that the school council wants to ask the whole school. Make the question clear and simple, so you are sure everyone across the school understands it as written.
Depending on the question, you may find it useful to add some options for classes to select from.
You should leave section 3 blank, this is where ideas from the classes are written down.
You then need a system for collecting and collating these sheets. It could be that they are all handed in to the office straight after form time to be collected by the school council secretary later.
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
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
With all the chat around curriculum and assessment reform, I thought it timely to blog about something that’s been irking me for a while.
Far too often, politicians and commentators are guilty of an over-reliance on their own experience of school. It’s the whole ‘I did XYZ assessment/exam, and IT DIDN’T DO ME ANY HARM’. Despite being simplistic, I think politicians see it as a useful device to come across as passionate, experienced and in touch with ‘normal people’ since it’s harder to argue with someone’s personal experience. That’s all fair enough, but what about those that aren’t heard?
I mean I don’t think that your view of education should be entirely isolated from your immediate experience of it. But that it needs to be balanced with evidence (not cherry-picked international evidence) and strong input from practitioners and students.
Of course, the latest example of this is Gove’s plan to scrap GCSEs that came out yesterday. Gove went school and he had a pretty difficult background. But he did O Levels, and he got good grades. That means that O Levels work, right?
But what about those that aren’t heard?
The point is that we rarely hear from those that the system has failed. What about those who it did actually do some harm to?
They’re not the ones in Sanctuary Buildings, on the benches of the Commons, or shooting the s*@t with Portillo on This Week.
I’m keen to hear more about Gove’s plan, the substance behind it and the link with the Singaporean model. But let’s take personal experience for what it is, the view of the (very successful and influential) individual and not more than that. Sadly, that may be all that counts.
BTW – like the one exam board idea. Professor Frank Coffield was laying into the exam board industry at a recent NUS event I was presenting at. Interesting how Gove’s idea on this is kind of ‘anti-market’.
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.
