Tag: pupil/student/learner voice

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What’s the NASUWT’s problem with student voice?

The NASUWT is concerned by increasing reports that student voice activities are being abused by some schools and resulting in practices which privilege pupils in a way which is undermining, disempowering and deprofessionalising teachers. These activities include using pupils to observe teachers teaching, involving pupils in the recruitment of staff, including on interview panels, and pupil questionnaires which are for management rather than educational purposes.

This is the opening line to an email sent out to the members of ‘the largest UK-wide teachers’ union’, the NASUWT, this week (one of whom sent it on to me).  Just a couple of the things that are troubling about this letter and the assumptions it makes:

  • Every time a teacher teaches, pupils observe them and pass judgement, that’s what happens in lessons. The judgement is communicated through engagement or disengagement. Wouldn’t it be better to capture this experience in a structured, focussed way so that teachers could use it for their professional development and improve student learning? Isn’t it clear that giving students a greater understanding of the teaching process improves learning, engagement and attainment (the General Teaching Council definitely thinks so, based on it’s research carried out by Cambridge University:
    Improving pupil learning through enhancing participation)
  • If this concern is coming from “increased reports”, why send out a letter saying, “The Union urgently needs case studies of teachers’ experiences of the abuse of student voice in schools”? Why not just use all the reports that are giving rise to concern?

One thing that I find particularly concerning is the timing of this letter and what this implies about its use. Responses need to be in by the end of the week, presumably so they can be used for a response to the DCSF’s consultation on ‘Considering pupils views’, which is on governors’ new duties regarding pupil voice. Now it’s right and proper that the NASUWT responds to this consultation, it wouldn’t be serving its members if it didn’t, but the things it’s asking for don’t relate to the questions being asked, which are:

  1. Do you feel it is appropriate for schools to invite and consider pupils’ views before revising equality policies or schemes in the area of race, disability and gender equality?
  2. Do you feel it is appropriate for schools to invite and consider pupils’ views before making changes to the times of school sessions?
  3. Do you feel it is appropriate for schools to invite and consider pupils’ views before agreeing their curriculum policy?

Nothing to do with lesson observations, interview panels and the like.  So is the union intending to launch a broadside on pupil voice generally to get in the way of allowing pupils to have more of a say in how their school is run? (The letter asks for people who are willing to be interviewed by the media.)

I really hope they would take a more measured approach, but this hasn’t been the NASUWT’s tactic so far with regards to student voice.  Chris Keates has consistently used the argument that because something is being done poorly in a few schools it should be stopped everywhere.  It’s exactly this kind of thinking that has paralysed so many schools with regards to school trips: poor practice and accidents can’t be completely prevented so we’re better off just not doing any, irrespective of the impact this may have on the quality of students’ experience and learning.

So if you’re an NASUWT member who is aware of the benefits of student voice, why not email your union (judy.stokes@mail.nasuwt.org.uk – she’s collecting the case studies) and see whether they’re willing to represent your views?

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Ashley School – using school councils to teach Citizenship

Ashley School Council's great slogan
Ashley School Council's great slogan

Yesterday Greg and I went to Ashley School in Widnes to do some testing for a big project we’re doing with the Parliament Education Service (PES).

It’s such a great school to visit because they really seem to get the links between the school council, Citizenship and the happiness of everyone in the school.

How do they do this:

  • Ensure everyone who wants to participate can. There are elected councils but also groups people can volunteer for.
  • There are groups that reflect a variety of interests to engage different students, to name just a few: Sports, Eco, Anne Frank (community and human rights).
  • All staff take responsibility and get involved with groups and committees that interest them: the PE teacher runs the Sports Committee, the Science teacher runs the Eco group, etc.
  • The school council is structured with a purpose, they decided to reflect the Houses of Parliament and use this as a teaching tool to help students understand the wider political system.
  • Pride of place is given to the pupils’ various councils and groups. They have their own committee room and displays in the reception area.
  • The school council is designed to be completely inclusive. Although there are no pupils with physical disabilities as Ashley School their committee room is designed to be accessible and usable by all, it includes a whole range of assistive technologies. There is even a CCTV system to meetings can be viewed all over the school.

Anyway, here’s a little video of their council chamber. Obviously we couldn’t get the kids in because of child safety issues, but you get the idea.

This is no new thing to Ashley School, they’ve been doing this work for years as this great article in the Guardian testifies: Friends, pupils, citizens

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Raising achievement through student voice and data

I just read this really interesting article on how schools in Colorado are finding that in the quest to raise standards and achievement that data alone is a blunt tool; student voice sharpens this.

Their recommendations are excellent, especially:

Utilize student-led outreach to capture feedback from disengaged students.

Have a read: http://blog.ednewscolorado.org/2010/01/05/in-r2t-student-voice-will-sharpen-blunt-instruments/

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Creating a communication plan for whole-school involvement

Thinking about communication, it's not just assemblies and noticeboards.
Thinking about communication, it's not just assemblies and noticeboards.

The Albion High School in Salford (Manchester) had a problem with its school council, as in many schools it was seen as ineffective and so became very unpopular with students.  Staff and governors set improving pupil voice as a key priority for the school. With help from Creative Partnerships they have rebranded and reconstituted the school council, which is now known as REGENERATE.  It has a significant budget (£30,000) and members of the Senior Leadership Team (SLT) provide direct support.

Having trained a number of Salford school council co-ordinators the other week I was invited to help run REGENERATE’s training yesterday – I was even billed as “Asher Jacobsberg: National Leader on Student Voice and Involvement” which was a bit of an ego massage! The day was opened by the Chair of Governors and the Headteacher, which I feel was really important for them and the students, really creating a link between the key decision-making bodies in the school. My role for the day, as well as running ice-breakers and rounding the day off, was to help the students decide on a strategy for getting the whole-school involved with REGENERATE. For me this always comes down to communication. The best way to start to pique people’s interest is to tell them about what you’re already doing, and encourage them to tell you what they think. Once that’s working, then they’re much more likely to want to move in to taking an active role.

As well as training, the day was used for making some structural decisions and voting in the Chair.
As well as training, the day was used for making some structural decisions and voting in the Chair.

So this is the session I ran with them, and we came up with a really solid communication plan at the end of it. Very importantly each element had someone who would be responsible for it, and a regular date on which it would happen.  Some of the ideas that the students came up with and will be taking forward:

  • Visit primary schools to tell them about REGENERATE, show they will be listened to at The Albion and find out what they want The Albion to be like when they get there.
  • Use social networking sites to spread the word about what REGENERATE is up to.
  • Create a REGENERATE jingle for the radio show that they will be recording.
  • Make sure that the REGENERATE noticeboards are updated after every meeting, that they are in places where everyone in the school will see them and that they are funny and interesting to look at!

Download the session plan as a Word 2007 .docx file (192 KB)

Download the session plan as a Word 2003 .doc file (225 KB)

To download as a PDF use the link in the Scribd window below.

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A short toolkit for school council co-ordinators

I created this short toolkit for the Salford School Council Co-ordinators Network.  As with everything we’re doing at involver when we create something we want to give it away for schools to use, play around with and share (that’s why we release everything under a Creative Commons licence). So have a look at this, I think there’s some really useful stuff in there, but it’s not supposed to cover everything, so if there are things you’d like us to add, just drop us an email and we’ll keep expanding it.  This is what’s in there now:

  • Ice breakers (4 school council-related games)
  • Boundaries and possibilities (2 different types of activity to explore what these might be)
  • School Councils are the end, not the beginning (presentation – hopefully it makes sense)
  • (Updated – April 2010) Planning elections
  • Key lines of communication (a worksheet for planning communication)
  • School policy on pupil participation (an essential document for any school that’s serious about pupil well-being – this is a guide to creating one)
  • School council constitution (you can’t really have pupil representation without one – although many try – some scenarios to set you on your way)
  • Tips for great meetings (guides to help you through preparing for a successful meeting, the meeting itself and ground rules to avoid pitfalls)

All three of these downloads have exactly the same stuff in:

[download id=”2″] 2.4MB
You can’t really edit it, but it will look just right with our nice fonts and things.

[download id=”93″] 1.3MB
Best if you might want to edit things and have a newer version of Word:

[download id=”92″] 2.9MB
Use this if you want to edit the file and can’t open newer Word files:

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Improving learning through enhanced participation

The event was at Birmingham Botanical Gardens, a lovely venue, but I walked through this hothouse and so arrived with steamed up glasses, trying to avoid stumbling into people.

The event was at Birmingham Botanical Gardens, a lovely venue, but I walked through this hothouse and so arrived with steamed up glasses, trying to avoid stumbling into people.

I was at the GTCE‘s ‘Leading a dialogue on pupil participation‘ event today, which I’m sure was called ‘From pupil voice to pupil participation’ when I signed up but never mind, I’m just as happy leading a dialogue as I am moving from one thing to something better.

I must say I was really impressed with the GTCE’s approach to participation and education in general. Their slogan of ‘for children, through teachers’ really chimes in with my view of teaching. The address by Chief Exec, Keith Bartley, really laid out how they see pupil participation as essential to successful and effective learning and teaching. This isn’t just idealistic stuff either, they’re backing it up with research and the event today was partly a launch for their new research anthology ‘Improving pupil learning through enhancing participation‘. It looks like a really good and useful piece of work – I haven’t had a chance to read the whole thing yet, but it’s my bedtime reading for the rest of the week, it should be yours too. The research looks at variety of drivers and outcomes for participation and I think should be very useful for anyone looking to demonstrate the value to colleagues (or themselves) of this work, as well as giving many practical suggestions for how it can be applied and lots of links to further research.

Some great examples came out of the presentation of this work by Dr David Frost of Cambridge

Dr David Frost (just so you could be sure it wasnt the other one)
Dr David Frost (just so you could be sure it wasn’t the other one)

University/Leadership for Learning, one of the authors of the piece. One that particularly stood out for me was a primary school where Y6 pupils had been trained to run circle time and they facilitated this for groups that included pupils from all ages in the school – one can imagine what this might do for a primary school’s sense of community.

A later presentation by Tom Murphy, a new science teacher from a Hertfordshire secondary school, talked about the benefits for his pupils when he asked them to teach full lessons for one another. Not only did they understand the topics better in many cases, it also created a ‘buzz’ for him and students before each lesson, as they never knew how it would be delivered. I intend to follow this work up with him and share more of this here as soon as I can.

We also heard from the deputy head of a special school about how creative they had had to be in using a huge variety of communication methods to ensure that all of their pupils could express themselves and make choices about their school, learning and lives.

Well, it’s late and I realise I’m kind of just reporting the event now, rather than discussing or developing any of the ideas that came out of it further, so I’ll come back to this in the next few days and add another post with some further thoughts.