Here’s Alison’s second blog, about the amazing Student Voice Conference at Little Heath! I’ve got a few videos from the day too, which I’ll upload soon.
It’s been an exciting couple of weeks!
Wednesday 2nd February was our annual Student Voice Conference at Little Heath. If I’m being honest I can’t believe it is over for another year! But there is still lots of work to keep us busy.
The conference was a real success.
Alok Sharma, MP for Reading West opened the day and encouraged the students in the importance of youth participation. The three workshops that took place were really thought provoking. Some really interesting ideas have come up as new projects for the STARS (Students As Researchers) to research. A particular favourite of mine is the idea of students having influence in teachers planning and having a say in the content of their lessons and the way it is taught.
The second workshop on student leadership got students thinking about the things that they want to be recognised for and how this can fit into a framework. For example, how the framework could be based around bronze, silver and gold levels. There were so many ways that students would like to be recognised for leadership, not just in Student Voice. They came up with ideas like Duke of Edinburgh, leading reading clubs and doing community service. It is exciting that the content and design for this framework is going to come completely from the students.
The third workshop looked at student Rights and Responsibilities. This linked into behaviour and how students want to feel safe. In addition, they looked at what helps them in the classroom to have a more effective learning experience. The students were also really forthcoming with ideas and how to refresh the schools Code of Conduct document into something more student friendly.
A question panel in the afternoon was a good chance for the students to ask questions to some of the staff. Questions about what they think makes a good learning environment, curriculum developments, advice for pathways after leaving Little Heath and also views on learning from former students.
Overall, the day was a credit to the enthusiasm of the students and their eagerness to be influential in their own education.
I think Twitter is an amazing resource and tool for teachers; I encourage all teachers I work with to join up. It gives you a quick, simple way to interact with colleagues and subject experts from outside your school and across the world. You find out what new things they’re trying, what’s working in their classrooms and what issues they’re facing. You can get help, give help and join in the debate.
… but there’s something missing …
The voice of students.
Today I was introduced by @ssat to @SchoolReport a student tweeting about his/her education and school life.
But that’s just one voice, wouldn’t it add so much to your teaching and learning if you also heard from students what was working for them, what wasn’t, the troubles and successes in their classrooms across the world. Asking them why would be very powerful. We’re all aware of the benefits for learners and teachers of getting learners to reflect on how they’re learning, asking for that to be open and enabling students and teachers to enter into conversations with each other about it would be a huge win all round.
I guess student tweeters could go down one of two routes:
Open tweeting (using your own name). If you’re confident in yourself, your school and your teachers to be mature about how feedback is given and taken.
Secret tweeting (using a pseudonym). This may be more comfortable (and fun), but I think if you’re going to go down this route you need to make sure you also don’t reveal the identity of your school, your teachers or your classmates.
So I’m not sure exactly how, but I think we need a concerted campaign to encourage more student tweeters (or should that be ‘twitterers’).
The first little step on Twitter tends to be a #hashtag, so I’ll suggest #svtweet (student voice tweet). Students already using Twitter or anyone wishing to start could tag any tweets about education or school #svtweet.
We’re a new (non-partisan) social enterprise trying to find our way in what seems like a very Big Society. Here’s some thoughts on our experience:
Outlook
The Big Society separates the third sector ‘moaners’ from the third sector optimists. It’s divided those who look back fondly on higher spending of the Labour government (who can’t quite come to terms with what’s happening), from those who are looking forward, getting on it with, and making the most of the opportunities the Big Society presents.
To be fair, I could be being a bit naive here.
If I was working for an organisation facing substantial cuts, I’d obviously see it differently. And from our position as a new and small organisation, this big new idea, introduced by a new government, means the playing field is a bit more level for us to get involved. Although competition is high, we’re not trying to muscle into a policy or administration with years of well-developed third sector links.
Naive or not, and without sounding like a cheerleader, I think it’s important that the third sector looks forward to make the most of the policy landscape of the day.
Plain talking
Having seen some amazing new branding from a few charities, I think we’re beginning to see the new administration and Big Society freeing up the sector to talk in plain English. It’s refreshing to see organisations just saying what they do. Saves time when you’re trying to find out. The freedom of not having to align your key message to seven different policy initiatives is good, regardless of how worthy those initiatives are. I do wonder, however, if over time the Big Society might get filled out with new buzzwords which we all start gradually mentioning as time goes by.
A big problem with plain talking about what we do, giving young people an influence in their education, is that I don’t really think the Conservatives will think it fits as part of their traditional approach to education.
That’s okay though, the Big Society doesn’t mean that we’re going to change what we believe in.
Disclaimer: I’m not sure if this is a Big Society thing. The freedom from buzzwords could happen when any new Government comes in. I’m not sure, I’ve only known Labour.
Vague
I’ve lost count of the number of coalition ministers who I’ve seen thrown by the simplest of questions; ‘what is the Big Society?’
No wonder the conference hall was strangely silent during this section of Cameron’s speech. It’s not very inspiring if the ‘salesmen and women’ of the policy are so unclear on what the policy actually is. I think this lack of clarity leads to two things: people who are involved in social action and participation get annoyed because they think the Government are implying that these are new ideas; and those who aren’t involved just switch off.
I get the impression that people working in the sector have got a better idea of what the Big Society might be, than the Government themselves. That might be not such a bad thing.
On the positive side, this vagueness means that third sector organisations have an opportunity to use more plain English (see above).
And although there are headlines about the Big Society (somewhere), it seems like the details are very much up for grabs.
I heard Gove talk last night at a Teaching Leaders graduation event. I’d talked about this with a friend recently, and – whether you like him or not – – seeing him give his speech made me agree that he comes across as very ideological.
I feel the Government know what they want to do, but probably needs some help from us to get there. Frustrated civil servants agree, so I guess what I’m saying is that the lack of detail presents opportunities.
N.B. Despite this, from what we’ve seen I think there are questions about how vague the Big Society actually is. Take the National Citizen Service pilots, for instance. Innovation was encouraged, but only within a very restricitve and scheduled delivery model!
Talking
Big Society has led to more people from more organisations talking to one another. That’s definitely a good thing, because I think the third sector is often pretty bad at collaborating. It’s understandable in some ways; two private organisations come together to make money. It’s more complicated to get together to ‘make more good’, although a lot more important.
Being engaged with the National Citizen Service – in a very minor way – has been a useful experience, because it’s got us talking with a range of organisations who we’d like to work with in the future. This has happened because of tight deadlines and the need for consortium bids. It’s great for us to be getting the word out about our work. These links wouldn’t have been made without the Big Society.
On the other hand, tight deadlines sometimes lead to desperation. To some extent, you can see this happening with the National Citizen Service pilot deadlines. Ill-thought through partnerships, could easily lead to poor delivery. We’ll see.
And even if the Government can get the message across to people what the Big Society is, the speed at which they’re trying to prove it’s a good idea could undermine everything.
Motives
We need to cut UK spending – most of us are agreed on that . Obviously the rate at which we do it is up for debate, but it needs to happen.
This confuses the idea of the Big Society for many because they think it’s designed to save money. I think that’s a very big part of it, but also part of the Conservatives natural desire for a smaller state. What is worrying is when the first bit of that sentence is used to sneak in the second: cuts being used as a reason to do things that the Conservatives really want to do anyway.
The Government’s response to the Browne Review exemplifies this: it’s not just about creating more money for universities, it’s about fundamentally changing who pays for higher education in the UK. Somehow, they’ve got the Lib Dem’s fooled.
The Conservatives should be honest about their intentions, and this helps to undermine the idea of the Big Society for me.
Greg Sanderson
PS. Love to hear your thoughts using the comments below..
To be effective school councils have to be expert communicators. Often a lot of emphasis is put on public speaking, and out-going communication, but communication is a two way process and arguably how a school council collects information is even more important.
To help a secondary school in Brent think about how they canvass the views of their whole school I wrote this short, simple session. They seemed to enjoy it and it helped them come up with some really useful ideas. Why don’t you give it a try and see if it works for you?
Download the session and resources: [download id=”222″]
Aims:
For participants to experience a few different ways of collecting information.
For participants to explore what those methods might be good for and what drawbacks they might have.
Age range: 11-18
Group size: 12-30
Time: 20-30 mins
Resources:
Notepad
Whiteboard/flipchart
Tables
Chairs
Pens
Marker pens
Paper stuck to wall
Room big enough for people to move around in.
Collecting ideas instructions sheets
Face-to-face survey sheets (x5)
Written survey sheets (x5)
Method:
Before the session starts (I did this during the previous session), select 5 people who will be your ‘researchers’.
Explain to each of them what they will be doing (give each of them an instruction sheet).
Send each of your researchers to the area they’ll be working in.
Split the rest of the class up and send them to
1/3 to meeting
1/3 to written survey
1/3 to opinion wall
N.B. None to informal chat or face-to-face survey
Tell them they’ve got 10 minutes to discuss/fill out surveys, etc.
After 10 minutes bring them all back into one group.
Ask each of the researchers to feed back their findings in turn.
Also ask them how they found using that method.
After each one ask the group to think about what situations it might be good to use that research method for.
Write these up.
Add-on: Put participants into pairs, get each pair to decide on a question and a research method they will use in the next week.
Obviously you can add in other research methods, making sure you stick to the principle that they’re using the method to find out whether or not it’s a good method.
Download the session and resources: [download id=”222″]
Download the session outline and resources as Word documents (all of these are included as one download above):
I've never been to a meeting quite like this, but I have been to ones where everyone is as engaged as these inanimate objects.
A couple of weeks ago I was approached by the chair of the syanagogoue I attended when I was younger. She asked me to set up a youth council with a bunch of really enthusiastic young people who have just completed their Kabbalat Torah (a kind of confirmation – a furtherance of the Bar Mitzvah).
Now, these young people are able and committed, but not neccessarily committed to the idea of sitting in meetings, but really who is? My Dad’s still an active member of the synagogue, by which I mean he goes to a lot of meetings, sits on various committees, but does he find them interesting, of course not. They’re boring and cumbersome, but they do allow him to see many of the friends he has at synagogue and he gets to contribute to the way the community runs.
So, when the Chair asked me to set up a youth council, I checked with her that this was what the young people themselves said they wanted.
‘Well, they didn’t say that exactly, but they did say they wanted to give something back and keep in contact,’ was the reply.
‘And when you say you want them to be a ‘council’, do you want them to represent the views of the other young people?’ I went on.
‘I don’t know, I hadn’t really thought of that.’
So I thought to myself, ‘really, what would work here for everyone?’
I decided that of course I didn’t have the answer, that would come from meeting the young people and asking them. So we arranged to meet one evening to discuss what interest they really had in this whole process.
We ate and chatted and discovered that they already did a lot for the synagogue, most of them volunteered as teaching assistants in the Cheder (Sunday School), one of them helped run the youth club and they’d all run a service together recently. What they really didn’t want was to feel like they were being dragged back to synagogue to eat up even more of their free time.
They were very keen though to have an excuse to get together and enjoy each other’s company and were happy to do that at the synagogue. They suggested getting together on a week night to cook for each other, eat and watch films on the synagogue’s big screen. They’re happy to organise something like this and thought that after the first one they’d invite the Chair and new Rabbi to attend for a bit to chat informally about what they wanted from (and wanted to put in to) the community.
They were happy too if the adults from the synagogue council wanted to ask them the odd question, that they might discuss over dinner and send back a response.
We discussed what would put them off coming and they resolved not to use those methods (including standing up in assembly to announce ‘an exciting new …’) to promote this event. They’re communicating with their peers in the ways that they like to communicate. I’m just on hand to offer support if they want it.
Is this exactly what the Chair expected? No, but I think in the end she’ll get a more committed, engaged group of young members, because they’re creating this experience for themselves, rather than having a structure imposed on them by adults.
Is this what the young people expected? Also not, I think they thought they’d go away with another person chasing them about coming to volunteer at another thing at the synagogue. What they got was an opportunity to keep up with their friends, and create something at the synagogue which they have ownership of, rather than just another thing they participate in.
When we’re setting up councils in schools, synagogues, churches, towns or wherever, what we want them to do is engage people in the way those communities run. So we need to set them up in a way that reflects that. Don’t make the method for engagement un-engaging, that makes sense, right?
How do you talk about the success of your school council?
When people visit your school do you tell them:
(a) About how this great group has redesigned the uniform, carried out an in-depth study into learning styles, raised thousands of pounds and reduced the school’s carbon footprint to zero?
(b) How it has enabled students from across the school to work together, been a channel for frustrated students to be heard and made staff think about things differently?
How do we judge politicians? On whether they 'make the trains run on time', or how democratic they are*?
Almost every school I go to tells me the (a) type things – and the problems they talk about are similarly about their inability to make visible improvements to the school. But, if I ask them what their school council is they will say it’s,
a democratic body of students, there to give the students a voice in the running of the school.
They very rarely say it’s,
a group of keen and able students who help the staff.
But more and more frequently I meet teachers who tell me they’ve selected a few of the people on the council ‘to help it work better – because some of the ones who got elected might struggle’, or even that they’ve done away with elections completely to make the school council ‘more effective’.
More effective at what?
What are the success criteria for a democratic organisation?
I would suggest that the most important is how well it involves everyone, not how well it involves the ‘right’ people. If you need to change the system to make it more effective this should be to make it more inclusive, not more efficient.
But if you’re going to change the system (and I think most schools need to), why not do both? Getting the whole school involved in identifying issues, coming up with solutions and taking action will result in far more changes and and wider engagement. Focus on spreading discussion and action to class councils, rather than pulling it in to the school council. Use whole school meetings, have online forums and noticeboards that the whole school can contribute to, set up action groups that anyone can be on, set up ‘social action time’ when the whole school is supported to work on their own projects.
* Fascist dictator of the 1920s and 30s, Benito Musolinni is often claimed to ‘have made the trains run on time’, it may well be that even this achievement is over-stated: http://www.snopes.com/history/govern/trains.asp
Searching for images to illustrate this article I came across this comic. It made me smile, which then made me think that I am falling in to the 'dad' stereotype. Ho hum.
