I wrote this little pocket guide for the school councils of some secondary schools I’m working with. It should be useful to anyone who’s interested in becoming a rep (representative) or is one already and wants some tips on how to make a good job of it.
Most schools have reps as part of the way they run student voice, often class reps, year or house council reps and then even school council reps who might meet with people from other schools.
But being a rep’s not easy, so here are some tips and guides on how to do it well.
Inside you’ll find answers to all of these questions:
What is a rep (representative)?
What’s good student voice?
What does a rep do?
How do I collect views?
How do I create change?
How do meetings work?
What should I ask in meetings?
How do I run a meeting?
What are minutes?
Can meetings be fun?
How do I present an idea?
How do we get things done?
It’s designed as an A5 booklet so if you print it our double-sided onto A4 all the pages should match up
Download the PDF here:
[download id=”220″]
As with all of our work, we release it under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike licence, so if you want to remix it – add your own logos, etc. – you can do that with the Publisher files here:
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:
The revolutionary school council? (They're supposed to be wearing berets :-))
Culture is a great thing, it gives us a sense of identity, place and often purpose too, but it doesn’t do much for progress. In many ways culture is the embedding of a certain way of doing things through unquestioning repetition.
All major changes in industry, science, religion, society and thought have come from people or ideas that went against the prevailing culture. For the purposes of this blog, I’m going to call this counter-culture; it sets out with one maxim:
We do not accept a view simply because it is stated by someone in a position of authority; it has to be proved to be of value to us.
Counter-culture is absolutely necessary for any society (or institution) that wants to learn and improve. Having assumptions challenged means the good ideas grow stronger and the poor ones are done away with. It recognises the need for constant re-evaluation (which is very different from constant change).
It seems to me that this is what should be at the heart of all education: working out from first principles what is valid, not basing our ideas on assumptions. So to what extent are our educational institutions counter-cultural? How do they inculcate this approach? I would argue that in most cases they don’t, they in fact do exactly the opposite.
In almost every school in the country there is a school/pupil/student council (or it may go by some other name on a similar theme). The aim of each of these is ‘to improve the school’, but how many really have the tools to do it? Most are given a narrow set of responsibilities and very limited scope in which to carry them out. Will this ever excite, represent or challenge most of the students or staff? If not, why are we doing them in school?
A number of questions I have been asked or that I have had to ask myself over the last couple of weeks have really brought this into focus for me:
From secondary school pupils:
Should staff set the agenda for our school council meetings?
Should we (the school council) be allowed to talk about and make statements on whatever is important to pupils?
Should staff play a role in selecting school council members?
From other researchers/practitioners in the field:
Are school councils merely there to deal with issues as they arise or should they create policy to pre-empt issues?
Does the headteacher lead the pupils in a school or does s/he just manage the staff?
Is it better to have a ‘learning council’ than a ‘pupil council’? (The suggesting being it puts learning at the heart of what it does, but I ask, ‘why demote pupils from being at the heart of what it does?’)
From discussions with an ex-school student leader from Greece:
What can a school council do if it’s not listened to? (In Greece they go on strike or occupy the school)
When staff allow students space to challenge they are forced into a real debate and both ‘sides’ have to question their own assumptions. Where schools just get students to help them with the things staff want to do there will be positive change, but it will be limited, never revolutionary.
This form will help students who are planning an even to create a budget to see whether it will make or lose money.
Another copy of the form can be used to record what is actually spent and made, giving an overall profit.
This works well with the action planning forms and guides.
If you want to suggest to your school that you could run an event, use this form and the SMART Matrix and you’ll be able to come up with a really good plan.
Created by Asher Jacobsberg at School Councils UK.
