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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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Free school council networking in London

Very often there’s just one member of staff in each school with responsibility for student voice and the school council (ideally it should be part of everyone’s role) so it can feel like you’re a bit unsupported. We’d like to set up some regular free events around London to get school council co-ordinators together to share ideas, resources (and tales of woe).

It’ll be something informal, Teachmeet-style, where we’d like to hear from anyone who is doing anything interesting in their school, or who is facing a particular challenge. We’ll be on hand to offer a school council surgery and we’ll see how it develops.

If you think you might be interested, fill out the form below:

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Ways to run school council meetings

These are a few ideas for how you can run discussions in your school or class council meetings. In fact you could use them in any meeting really.

Method Good for Be aware of
Yes/No/Maybe – designate a different area of the room for each answer. Ask the question and get people to stand in the area that represents their answer. Ask people to explain their reasoning and persuade others.

A more sophisticated version is an ‘opinion line’ where participants place themselves along a line to show how strongly they agree/disagree with something.

A further level of sophistication is to make a graph with 2 axes (e.g. difficulty vs importance or agree vs care).

 Getting people out of their seats.

Pushing people to explain their reasoning.

Getting different people talking.

Being a physical demonstration of changing opinion and persuasion.

 Peer pressure: people not wanting to stand on their own. You can often avoid this by starting with trivial questions and supporting and praising those who do stand on their own.
Passing the ‘conch’ – an object is passed around and only the person with that object can speak.

Different rules can be applied: e.g. when you have the ‘conch’ you have to speak; the ‘conch’ has to be passed round the circle; the ‘conch’ can be passed to anyone you like; the conch only goes to those demonstrating good listening.

 Stopping interrupting: it gives a very clear signal of who is supposed to be speaking.

Can help quieter people to speak, because they know they won’t be interrupted and/or they are required to.

 The ‘conch’ becoming a distraction.

Meetings becoming slow if there is no Chair to pass the ‘conch’ on.
Small groups – set the question and then split the class in to small groups (3-6). Ask them to discuss it and come up with one answer that they can all agree on. Have one person from each group give their group’s answer and reasoning. Allows everyone to have a say without taking too long.

Encourages compromise within the small group.

 One person dominating a small group.

If all the small groups come up with different answers coming to a conclusion may need further discussions.
Losing your marbles – give each person 3 marbles. When someone speaks they have to hand over a marble, so once they’ve contributed three times they need to stay quiet. You can also turn this round and say by the end of the meeting everyone needs to have lost all of their marbles. Making sure the meeting isn’t dominated by a few people.

Encouraging people to consider what is really important for them to contribute to.

Keeping track of who contributes and who doesn’t.

 Having everyone run out of marbles before the end – you need to make sure everyone knows what is coming up, so they can plan when to use a marble.

What methods do you use to liven up your meetings and ensure that everyone gets a say?

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Primary school council policy

The new headteacher of Welbourne Primary School in Tottenham – the school I’m a governor of – has asked me to help set up a new school council. My first step is to come up with a draft policy that I’ll use as the starting point for discussions with staff and pupils.

Download this sample policy to adapt and use: [download id=”240″]

I’m obviously trying to keep it short and simple so everyone can understand it. Here’s my first attempt. I’ll update it as the discussions progress. Do you have any comments or suggestions?

The 10 Commandments from flcikr/jbtaylor
Well, I couldn't quite get it down to 10, but it's what we're aiming for.

What is our school council for?

  • The school council is about:
    • Learning to work together
    • Learning about democracy
    • Learning how to play a positive role in our community
  • The school council’s job is to involve everyone, not do everything. It needs to get everyone:
    • Finding things they want to change
    • Coming up with ways to make them better
    • Putting those ideas in to action
    • Seeing what works (evaluating)

How does our class council work?

  • Our whole class has a meeting every 2 weeks on [day] at [time].
  • We decide what we’re going to talk about the day before the meeting, so everyone has time to think.
  • A different person runs the meeting each time (with help from the teacher if they need it).
  • A different person takes notes each time (with help from the teacher if they need it).
  • We choose two people from our class to go to a whole school council meeting.

What will the school council do for our class?

  • When you give your class representative an idea, she or he will:
    • Note it down
    • Take it to the next school council meeting
    • Tell you what is happening to your idea within two weeks
  • The school council will try to make your idea happen by getting:
    • Permission
    • Support
    • Money
    • Time
  • If they can’t they will tell you why not.
  • If they can, they will want your class to help make your idea happen.

What will teachers and TAs do for the school council?

  • Make sure meetings happen when they are supposed to.
  • Support pupils to run meetings.
  • The Headteacher will answer all the school council’s questions within 1 week.
  • If the Headteacher has to say ‘no’ to anything, she will explain why.

Now, this isn’t as short and snappy as I’d hoped, but I think it’s a good start. We’ll see what we can cut out as we go, without losing the essence of it. We’ll also be trying to create a pictorial version. I’m sure doing that will help us work out what’s really essential.

Download this sample policy to adapt and use: [download id=”240″]

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Out of the toilet and in to the classroom

Working with primary school councils in Oldham and Haringey over the last two days I ran in to the same issue that so many schools and their councils struggle with: can we get beyond talking about the toilets?

The simple suggestion I gave to them is to split their School Council in to Action Teams. This ensures that their school councils look beyond the physical and start to deal with all the things that are going on in their schools. We find these Action Teams cover most aspects of what goes on in school:

Learning

 Learning
  • Helping everyone to enjoy learning
  • Trips
  • Bringing people in to the school
  • What happens in class

Relationships

 Relationships
  • Helping people have fun
  • Stopping bullying
  • Making school friendly

Fundraising & Events

 Fundraising
  • Finding out what needs money
  • Making money
  • Putting on competitions, shows and special days

Environment

 Environment
  • Saving energy
  • Recycling
  • Making sure the school looks good
  • Getting fun equipment

Communication

 Communication
  • Letting people know what’s going on
  • Getting ideas
  • Assemblies
  • Website
  • Noticeboard

If you just want to have four Action Teams you could miss out Communication, but then you need to make sure all other groups share responsibility for this and report back on their communication each time.

So all items brought up from class council meetings, suggestion boxes, from the school council blog, etc. get allocated to the most appropriate Action Team by the Chair and Secretary (with support from the Link Teacher if they need it). The Action Teams then need to meet to discuss those issues and figure out which ones they can take action on (if nothing has been suggested for an Action Team, they need to seek something out). These actions are then what is taken to the full School Council meeting for ratification. You could fit in this extra meeting by replacing every other School Council meeting with Action Team meetings or by having the Action Team meetings for the first third or half of the time allocated for the School Council meeting.

The school council meeting becomes a way to co-ordinate all the pupil-led activities and to check that no actions will adversely affect any pupils. So it has a standing agenda of:

Item Person Time
1 Apologies (from people who can’t make the meeting) Secretary 1 min
2 Check last meeting’s minutes (to make sure they’re correct) Chair 2 mins
3 Learning Action Team

  • Report on actions from last time (matters arising)
  • What we are going to do this time (for agreement)
 LAT Chair 5 mins
4 Relationships Action Team

  • Report on actions from last time (matters arising)
  • What we are going to do this time (for agreement)
 RAT Chair 5 mins
5 Fundraising and Events Action Team

  • Report on actions from last time (matters arising)
  • What we are going to do this time (for agreement)
 FaEAT Chair 5 mins
6 Environment Action Team

  • Report on actions from last time (matters arising)
  • What we are going to do this time (for agreement)
 EAT Chair 5 mins
7 Communication Action Team

  • Report on actions from last time (matters arising)
  • What we are going to do this time (for agreement)
 CAT Chair 5 mins
8 Any other business (A.O.B.) Chair 2 mins
9 Date of next meeting Secretary 1 min

This way the meetings should be focussed on action, should discuss more than just what colour to paint the toilets and be quicker – as the reports are not for in-depth discussion, just for ratification.

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School councils – welcome back!

Hello everyone,

Welcome back to school. Hope you all had a fun summer!

To give you a quick  idea of what we’ve been up to…..

In between lovely holidays to Loch Ness, Aberdeen, Rugby and France, we’ve been doing lots of work on the Smart School Council Community, a charity we’re setting up and supporting.

It’s led by fifteen founding schools who we know have AMAZING student voice/school councils. Any young person, teacher or governor can join for FREE and get some help (or help others) with your school council. Good deal, right?

Head over to www.smartschoolcouncils.org.uk to get involved.

As a social enterprise based in Tottenham, we’ve been busy helping out after the riots. As well as donating and sorting clothes, Asher’s been writing about the subject and also been on the radio talking about it.  That second link features a hilarious picture of him.

Related to these events, and the questions about education and engagement in the UK today, we’re working on an exciting new film project with the Carib Theatre Company and Franklyn Lane Productions. We’ll keep you posted.

 We also had a great time at the UKYP Annual Sitting. LOADS of really engaged young people who are a credit to their areas and the UKYP too. Here’s Asher next to our stand:

And here’s our map where you could rate your school council:


Finally, don’t forget that you can get us in to do some training in your school or cluster of schools.

We’ve got lots of training booked, including trips to the Republic of Ireland and the Czech Republic.

Importantly, we’re working with many  local schools in Tottenham as part of the Smart School Council Community too.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for lots of useful advice and blogs!

Greg