An email I received from a teacher friend last week (name and school removed to avoid blushes):
hey
I’m revamping my department handbook and I’m at the policy section, i’d really like an amazing students voice policy but I know we are very medicore at it so
HELP
________________________________
??? ???
Head of Drama
Large London Comprehensive
My response:
KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid - I know the picture's not that relevant, but it might help you remember the maxim.
Keep it simple. No more than a couple of sentences on each.
Why is student voice important to us (staff and students)?
What does this mean in our work (what influence will students have in decision-making and T&L)?
What does this look like (list any particular activities that will take place – evaluations, students as teachers, etc.)
How will we measure success (what are your success criteria, how and when will you measure them)?
When and how will you review this policy?
So the whole thing should be no more than a page in your handbook.
I would obviously suggest you work on all of these questions with your staff and students. A very simple way to do this would be to write down your first thoughts an d give them to groups of students and your staff to comment on. This could be done online using Google Docs so people could see how others are updating it and many people can work on it at once.
Regards,
Asher
I think this would stand pretty well for writing a new policy for most things. What do you think?
The summer break is almost upon us (or already here, depending on where in the UK you are), so we hope you’ve had a great year!
Here’s a round up of what we’ve been up to over the last month:
Blog: School councils and student voice: why bother?
Greg says, ‘I’m working from Scotland for most of this week, which meant a very long eight hour train journey! After a double espresso, I was feeling a bit reflective about some of the things that we’re doing with involver and why we’ve been doing them.’ Here are his thoughts: http://involver.org.uk/2010/07/school-councils-and-student-voice-why-bother/
Training: Making your school council READY!
Lots of schools are thinking about how they can improve their school council or student voice next year – we can help you make it READY (yes, that’s an acronym, have a look here if you want to know what for): http://involver.org.uk/2010/07/school-council-training-get-in-touch/
Resource: Great set of student voice resources from Australia
Asher came across this series of presentations and supporting resources, which was created by Nick Rate, a trainer from Australia. He’s recorded it all so the people he supports in far flung places down under can access them, but of course it means we all can, we love the internet: http://www.jogtheweb.com/run/AlhYPd3PMcUd/Student-Voice
Video: Make Your Voice Heard: Discover Democratic Education
A great video from the States about why ‘doing democracy’ in schools is so important. It is included in the set above, but worth a special mention: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_LbZ3XcfK4
Project: Speaker’s School Council Awards 2011
After a hugely successful opening year, you can now register your interest in the Speakers School Council Awards 2011. It’s a great way to get your achievements recognised, so to get involved, hop over to: http://www.speakersschoolcouncil.org
Evaluation: Student voice/school council progress this year?
How have you been getting on with student voice, this year? It’s not easy to get right, and it still takes work and support even when it’s a success. We’ve built a very short audit tool to help you reflect. Fill it out and we’ll even provide you with personalised feedback and ideas if you want us to: http://involver.org.uk/participate/simple-student-voice-audit/
Network: A new Student Voice and School council Linkedin group
For those of you that use Linkedin (for those who don’t: it’s kind of like a professional Facebook), we’ve set up a group to connect and inform people about student voice and school councils. We’re still finding our way around LinkedIn, but our teacher friends tell us it’s very useful. So take a look, and join at: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=3089339
Networking-fun: Fantasy Democraball!
We’ve set up a fantasy football mini-league for our friends, colleagues and contacts, so please join and invite oithers. You don’t need to know anything about football, just how to add up to £100,000,000. It’s a head-to-head league, so each game you’ll be playing against another person from the citizenship/student voice/youth democracy world (your skill in beating them will be a good ice-breaker topic for when you next meet them at a conference). It’s free to sign up. Once you’ve picked your team use this code to join the ‘Democraball!’ league: 116742-35727 http://fantasy.premierleague.com
So have a great summer!
And remember, if you want to get in touch about anything we’re up to, then please email us at info@involver.org.uk. We’re also always keen to hear about and share good practice, new resources or developments in student voice.
Lots of schools are beginning to think about training their school council, or student voice groups, for next academic year.
If you want to make your student voice READY, then get in touch! You can read more about our training here.
It might be two days training to breathe new life into your tired school council, a staff INSET on student voice, or a half day workshop supporting students to be on an interview panel. Whatever it is, all of our training aims to make student voice:
School councils. Student voice. Giving young people a say in how their school is run. Sounds like effort, doesn’t it? Kids are there to be educated, not to take part in it, right?
So why do so many schools bother with it? Because the Government says you have to listen to pupils? Because Ofsted might come and chat to your school council? Because some kids had a couple of good ideas and you might as well give it a go? Because some kids want to practice being politicians, and you need to give them a way to do that?
Let’s be clear : schools present a unique opportunity for young people to learn about democracy.
And let’s be double – clear: this opportunity is being missed by too many schools.
Student voice and school councils are often tokenistic. Young people are told that they have influence (but only the cleverest or most confident are allowed to use it), that they are listened to (as long as they give the right answer), and that they are free to talk about what they want (but can’t actually do anything to make things better).
Our approach is to help schools make the most of this opportunity, challenge tokenism, and help get more young people involved.
Very simply, we want young people to understand how their ideas can turn into actions which can turn into improvements for themselves and others. Learning democracy by ‘doing democracy’. Less sitting back and moaning about things, and more action!
See what I did there?
I was working in Islamia Primary School in Brent yesterday, helping their new student voice team to plan for next year. One of the big ideas that came up was trying to get mirrors in the girls’ toilets. The girls’ headscarves were coming loose during the school day, and they had no mirrors to check if they were on properly. When they return from their summer break, the team plan to get going on this idea. They are six years old.
Now this might just be a few mirrors, but if young people can see how they can influence their lives and surroundings from a young age this plants important seeds. As they become secondary age students they will believe that they can take action and change things, and then university students will too.
Young people will find it more difficult to have the desire or to understand how they can change things in adult life if they’ve had no practice! Or if they’ve been kept in a simulated democratic world where they are ‘listened to’ but never have the experience of negotiating, collaborating and struggling to achieve their own, shared aims.
And this should never be just about training the next generation of politicians – if you know how to ‘plan’, ‘do’ and ‘reflect’ a project with a group of people, that is useful whatever you choose to do in life.
It’s also very important that schools connect learning about the same concepts. We’re all agreed that democracy and empowerment are important concepts, right?
So let’s use every opportunity we can to connect what we can learn about in the news, in the curriculum, with what we do in student voice. It’s about connecting what others do, with what we do.
Let’s reflect on MPs expenses, by talking about school councillor expenses; let’s discuss the coalition government by talking about how easy it is to decide things by committee; let’s think about the civil rights movement and suffragettes when planning a student voice election. We grasp things best when we understand them from different angles.
Not seeing these links can undermine everything. You might be less inspired about by Barack Obama’s democratic journey if your ‘democratic’ school council is just the ten brightest pupils, picked by the head teacher!
So let’s be clear: a healthy democracy needs curious, active people. A healthy democracy needs healthy democratic education, and schools are central to that.
I posted yesterday about a number of student voice ideas and issues that came up at a training session I ran recently. It seemed a bit remiss to leave those issues just hanging there, we are in the business of (helping you) solve those kinds of problems after all. Luckily I took some photos last week at the training I ran for Wolverhampton’s primary school council co-ordinators where we were looking at what solutions they might use for just some of these problems.
Apologies for the rather garish colours but they actually make the images more readable (honestly). If any of them are too small to read, click on them and you’ll be able to see a larger version. These are the issues we looked at:
Just before half term I ran a training course for ASCL (the Association of School and College Leaders), as part of this we collected together a wide variety of student voice activities that the participants had come across. We also highlighted a number of issues that could come up in trying to implement these schemes.
I thought this was a great collection so I’m sharing them with you here. Please add any other ideas in the comments and I’ll add them to the mindmap.
To see the whole mindmap (it’s pretty large) click on (in the middle at the top), this will collapse all the levels. Then click on the little plus signs on each ‘node’ to expand it. The whole map can be dragged around too. (If this is just too complicated there’s a list version underneath)
To see the whole mindmap (it’s pretty large) click on (in the middle at the top), this will collapse all the levels. Then click on the little plus signs on each ‘node’ to expand it. The whole map can be dragged around too. (If this is just too complicated there’s a list version underneath)
Student Voice Ideas and Issues
+– Behaviour
+– Support
Conflict resolution
Target setting
Buddies
+– Monitoring/enforcement
Student Panel
Prefect System
Prefect system based on school council
‘Self Government’ responsible for rules
+– Policy-making
Code of Conduct
Setting class groundrules
Linking local community to school council to deal with after school issues
Head boy/girl oversee prefect system
Rewards and sanctions group
+– Issues
+– Due to structure
Involving all students
Power
Money
Time
Influence
Succession
+– Fears
Is it democratic?
Censorship required?
Getting a representative group
Getting responses completed and handed back
Pleasing everyone
Unsupportive colleagues
+– Individuals’ ability
+– Lack of training
Staff
Students
Making decsions
Planning issues
Confidentiality
Realistic/appropriate ideas
+– Perception issues
Seen negatively by other students
Pupils not on council/identified by badges, ties, etc. might feel they have less influence
Getting people to recognise the importance
+– Teaching and Learning
Pupil interview panels
Students to reseacrh attitudes to learning
+– Peer support
Peer assessment
Peer mentoring
Peer tutoring (reluctant readers)
Student academic mentors
+– Formal student evaluation
Student SEF
Faculty reviews
Insted (student Ofsted)
Lesson observations by student council
Reviews
Student observers
Students observing rooms focussing on noticeboards and levelled work
+– Informal student evaluation
Learning walks
Discussion on T&L
+– Student planning and teaching
Students teaching G&T lessons
Numeracy, literacy and sports leaders
Curriculum planning
Ambassadors for different subject areas
Sports ambassadors
+– Environment
+– Eco
+– Reducing carbon footprint
Students approached governors and got £500 to kick off project
Campaign to use both sides of paper in ICT
+– Eco council
Huge electricity bill
School eco bag
Sustainability
Recycled stationery shop
Eco bags competition
+– Built environment
Surveys
Students designing toilets in BSF
Changing the building
Environmental group (outside spaces)
+– School environment
Sub-committees
New uniform put in place by school council
School improvement
House leaders recognised through their tie and jumpers
Fund raising for school council to meet objectives
+– Relationships
Appointments
+– Leaders wristbands
Community
Befriender
Attender
+– Fund raising activities
Enterprise
Anti-bullying (FAB)
Good Citizenship Awards
+– Peer mentoring
Bullying
Advisors
Student website
Council target setting using SMART targets to measure success
School councils. Student voice. Giving young people a say in how their school is run. Sounds like effort, doesn’t it? Kids are there to be educated, not to take part in it, right?
(in the middle at the top), this will collapse all the levels. Then click on the little plus signs on each ‘node’ to expand it. The whole map can be dragged around too. (If this is just too complicated there’s a list version underneath)