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:
We've had so much going on recently we haven't had much time to send out newsletters, so we've rather stuffed this one with free resources by way of apology.
Resource: Quick tips for running meetings
4 simple ideas for different ways to run class and school council meetings if you're struggling (or just fancy a change): http://involver.org.uk/?p=2973
Campaign: Hands Up Who's Bored?
With the changes to the curriculum there's a real threat to the one subject that really supports young people's participation, Citizenship. We've been helping lead Democratic Life to campaign to strengthen Citizenship for a while, but there's a new campaign aimed at young people being fronted by Danny Bartlet with Radio 1 DJ (and Rastamouse) Reggie Yates. Have a look:
Main website: http://whosbored.org/
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXgHjFSzbEQ
Resource: What's a school council for?
I created this school council policy for the school I'm a governor of. It places an emphasis on involving the whole school through class councils. Would it work in your school? What's missing? What would you add? http://involver.org.uk/?p=2842
News: Walking the walk
It was Takeover Day last month and we were really proud to take part and we got loads of great ideas from the four young people who became directors of involver for the day. This is what they thought of the experience: http://involver.org.uk/?p=3005
Resource: Children's Commissioner's 'How to' guide on student voice
We carried out some research for the Children's Commissioner in to good practice around student voice, this two-page guide for staff is one of the things that came out of it. Have a look: http://involver.org.uk/?p=2879
Get a free copy: we've just written this little guide for primary (KS2) school councillors. To thank you for taking an interest in what we do, we'd like to give you a free copy. If you'd like one, email us your address: info@involver.org.uk Get more than one copy: if you want more you can order them here: http://involver.org.uk/shop/
On our travels
During the (English) half-term we were invited over to Ireland to train teachers and students from County Donegal's primary, post-primary and Youth Reach schools. It went so well that we're going back in March, after a trip to train up the school councils of Prague. We are living the life! Although he's difficult to make out, that's Greg outside our first training venue, the Donegal Cultural Centre – the day did get sunnier.
Today, Welbourne prefects took over as a director for take over day.
I thinked they loved it because it is a big opportunity for them to see how it is to be in someone else’s shoes for a day.
Melanie said:
“I thought it was brilliant because it was very interactive”
Kenoly said:
“Oh it was the best day ever”
Martell said:
“This day could never get better”
Austina said:
“IT WAS THE BEST DAY EVER!!!!!! COULDN’T GET BETTER”
By your prefect Martell, Age 11
___________________________________
Thanks Martell, great blog and video!
It was a really useful day for us too. As a result of the pupils’ help, we’ve improved the programme for a forthcoming school council event, will do a new student voice quiz, and have lots of new contacts in Haringey schools.
Here’s some more snaps from the day. Thanks to Michael Antoniou for taking them, the students for coming in, and the Children’s Commissioner for organising such an important project.
On Friday 11 November, Tottenham-based, social enterprise, involver, will be taken over by pupils from Welbourne Primary School. Four pupils will be made Directors of involver for a day, running the organisation and deciding on its future strategy.
This is being organised as part of a national day of action by young people, co-ordinated by the Children’s Commissioner for England, under the banner of Takeover Day 2011.
The enterprising young pupils will be writing new resources for other schools to use, blogging about their day, calling up Haringey schools to talk about working together and creating a strategy for involver to follow for the rest of the year.
Martell, 11, who will be one of the Directors for a day, is excited by the opportunity, “I think it’s good that we’re going to get to run involver, because their business is about schools and kids, so we’ll have good ideas about what they could do.”
Asher Jacobsberg, one of involver’s founders and it’s (current) Director, said, “We help schools to get young people learning about democracy by playing an active part in running their schools, so this is a great opportunity for us to practice what we preach. I think we’ll finish this day with better, more relevant ideas for how we can help primary-age students than we could come up with in a year on our own.”
Maggie Atkinson, Children’s Commissioner for England said: “I am very excited about our fifth Children’s Commissioner’s Takeover Day this year, and I look forward to hearing about what people are doing. The day provides such a brilliant opportunity for children and young people to make a difference to their schools and communities, have their voices heard and challenge the stereotypes about them that we hear too often. Children and young people have so much to offer. They bring ideas, imagination and energy which can really make a difference to organisations.”
The Welbourne pupils will start by learning about what a social enterprise is and then move on to the real work: creating a strategy for involver’s work with primary-age pupils. Once they’ve thrashed that out they will be starting to put it in to action.
Pupils might end up outlining books to help school councils involve the whole school, organising events for Haringey schools, or writing sessions for training other young people. Involver are clear that what the Welbourne pupils do really is up to them, they are the bosses.
Involver have committed to carry through on the strategies decided by the young people and credit them as colleagues on any materials arising from their work.
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?
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″]
When schools are being blamed for not connecting young people with their communities, a key tool that helped young people to see that their communities are what they make them, not something that happens to them, has been swept away.
Under the previous Ofsted framework student voice (and thereby the importance of students to the school community) was emphasised in three ways:
Schools had to show in their Self-Evaluations Forms (SEFs) how they had engaged with and listened to students as part of their on-going strive to improve.
Ofsted inspectors met with students who had been elected by their peers as their representatives (the school council).
Ofsted wrote a clear, simple letter direct to students (via the school council) explaining the key findings of their inspection.*
All of these have disappeared.
All of them showed students that they had a stake in the school and their own education, they were not just raw material with which good teachers would make good grades and bad teachers would make bad grades.
Now it has been pointed out to me that good schools will do this anyway and I’m sure they will because they’ve seen the benefits, but it’s about getting those other schools to try it so they also see the benefits. Showcasing and sharing good practice is important but it can never provide the same impetus for schools that feel too nervous or busy to try things that the carrot/stick of an Ofsted grading can.
Once schools do get over that first hurdle they see how teaching and learning can be improved, how pupils’ self-confidence and communication skills grow and how pupils come to have a greater respect for a community they feel respects them. One of the most positive things Ofsted did was help schools take that first step. I fear that the new Ofsted framework will further widen the gap between those students who feel their community listens to them and those who don’t. We will end up with schools that produce young people with high grades but no skills with which to apply them. No understanding of teamwork, compromise, respect or self-determination. That’s not to say that the schools that do actively encourage students to express their views, collaborate and be critical thinkers won’t also get high grades, far from it, but their students will have so much more on top of the grades.
So what could Ofsted do? Well, given that they’re not going to reinstate the SEF, they should at least do numbers 2 and 3 above. They should extend to students the system that they will be releasing in October for surveying parents; this will give a much more complete and detailed picture (as staff and governors will be spoken to directly). They also need to define far more carefully what they mean by ‘take account of the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of pupils when judging the overall effectiveness of the school’. But if they don’t act fast I think we will see a still nascent area of learning, student voice, disappear in many schools and with it any constructive way for many students to feedback on, engage with and improve their schools.
* This was also published online and I bet it was pretty useful to many parents too, as it was much easier to read than the formulaic, lengthy and jargon-heavy main reports. Have a look for yourself (the letter to the pupils is at the bottom): Welbourne Primary School Ofsted Report 2009
