Tag: pupil/student/learner voice

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Citizenship involver blog News

Citizenship stays but it needs to be active

We are really happy to see that Citizenship will stay in the National Curriculum, it’s something for which, as part of Democratic Life, we have been campaigning for a long time. We hope that now the uncertainty that has hung over the subject has been lifted schools will give it the support and time it deserves.

Be The Change
This Gandhi quotation goes to the heart of citizenship: it’s not about what you do with your spare time, it’s about what you do with all your time. We’d like the curriculum to make that link clearer.

We have always argued that the best way to teach Citizenship is with the support of genuine, democratic, active student voice. How better to understand your impact on your community and society than by being involved in improving the community you spend most of your time in, your school? How better to understand democracy and its difficulties than by trying to create, manage and take part in a democratic school council? So we are somewhat concerned that the active element of Citizenship seems to have been virtually removed from this Programme of Study, all that is left is volunteering.

More than volunteering

Volunteering is a part of active citizenship, but it is far from the essence of it. Active citizenship is about the choices one makes consciously about how one interacts with society. This includes what kind of work you do, whether you pay your taxes, whether you vote, how you challenge and support institutions (including your school) as well as what you do in your free time. Getting students to research, discuss and submit responses to this National Curriculum consultation, or their school’s consultation on whether to convert to academy status is active citizenship, but it’s not volunteering. Volunteering tends to be about helping others; I would suggest that citizenship is about helping the community of which you are a part.

We will be submitting a response to the Department for Education that is generally supportive of the proposed Citizenship elements, but asks it to broaden out the active citizenship element. We’ll post that response here soon.

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involver blog

How you can help teach about participatory budgeting

[iframe http://www.kisskissbankbank.com/en/projects/apprendre-a-compter/widget/ 232 330]

As regular readers of our website will know, we think participatory budgeting is a fantastic way to get your whole school involved in pupil voice. Loads of schools do it already through getting the whole school involved in deciding on new playground equipment or how a new building should be fitted out, but coming up with a good structure for it can transform student voice in your school.

This guy wants the chance to help schools across Europe learn about good ways to run participatory budgeting, but he needs your help. He’s asking for small donations (even just a couple of pounds) to fund the making and distribution of this series of interactive videos.

Watch the video he’s made explaining the idea and if you can pledge some money, please do (I have already).

If you can’t see the information about the project to the left, click this link to see the video, read more and pledge: http://www.kisskissbankbank.com/apprendre-a-compter

 

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involver blog Resources

Tips for chairing meetings

A tipped chair
A different kind of chair and a different kind of tip, but you see what I’m getting at.

I’m currently mentoring the co-chairs of Haringey Youth Council and I came up with this list of tips for them, which I thought others might find useful.

What are your tips for making meetings run smoothly and involving everyone? Add them in the comments below.

Before the meeting

If at all possible make sure information goes out before the meeting, so you can spend the meeting discussing and making decisions, not listening to presentations.

Have timings for each item on the agenda. This will mean you can get through the whole thing as everyone knows when they need to draw the discussion to a close (or when you’re going to force them to).

Set up the room so that everyone can see one another and you can see everyone. There’s nothing more annoying than wanting to speak in a meeting but not being seen.

When any new people or visitors come to the meeting introduce yourself and welcome them.

In the meeting

Sit next to the person taking the minutes so you can check that you’re both keeping up.

When you want people to move to a decision, summarise what the decision is: don’t try to summarise the whole discussion.

Write up options and decisions so that everyone can see them. This helps avoid confusion and repetition.

When people put their hand up to speak, give them a nod and write their name on a list. This way they can put their hand down and concentrate on the discussion knowing they won’t be forgotten.

Add your name to the list when you want to speak, this will stop you jumping in.

If it’s important to the discussion that you hear from everyone, make sure you go round the whole group and specifically ask everyone for an opinion.

When people give opinions, ask them to explain their reasoning. This will move the debate forward.

Meetings should be about action – what you are going to do – so try to move the discussion into the future tense. Discussions in the past tense tend to be about blame, present tense tends to be about opinions, but future tense tends to be about action. It’s easier to find consensus over the what to do in the future than who to blame for what happened in the past.

If you think everyone agrees with an idea, check by asking if anyone wants to speak against it. If no one does, then you are safe to assume everyone agrees.

Be aware of jargon or ideas that people new to the meeting might not understand. You can either explain them or ask the person speaking to briefly explain the term for new members, guests, etc.

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involver blog

Involver Internship

By way of an introduction, my name is Cameron and I recently graduated from a Journalism & Media BA. I am very lucky to have been given the opportunity to work with Asher and Greg here at Involver while developing the new Smart School Councils site, so you can
expect to read more from me over the coming weeks.

From my own experience at school, college and university, it has become apparent that the student voice is an important aspect of any educational institution that is too often neglected. When there are channels in place for students to have an input into how their school works, it seems that there is usually no real power to make a change put into their hands. This often leaves student councils and other democratic processes to the few students who have developed a passion for the political and the confidence to challenge their teachers, leaving the majority of students who have their own concerns and ideas without any real ability to be heard.

At Involver, we aim to work with students and teachers to put in place the resources and training necessary to give everyone the chance to get involved helping to improve their school. This helps schools develop a community spirit and collaborative ethos for the benefit of staff and pupils alike, while also teaching young people about responsibility and democracy to prepare them for life after education.

It’s an ideology I am proud to support, and I look forward to contributing to and learning from the Involver team while we produce content for the Smart School Council site. I’m also hoping to hear from students and teachers who are interested in what we do here or have their own ideas about democracy in schools, so please feel free to email or get in touch on the forums.

We are happy to answer any questions you may have about what we do and why we do it.

 

Cameron Scott Doherty.

Email: info@involver.org.uk ¦ Portfolio: www.csdoherty.wordpress.com

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involver blog

A personal explanation of a Czech school council

Our installment today comes from Dobronin village school. It is yet another great school council experience for us with a school council that is clearly working very well. I think the influence of CEDU and the process they have been through with the schools is evident. They have taken all of these schools on residentials and worked with them on problem-solving, negotation and teamwork and it really shows. I would love involver to be able to run something similar for schools in the UK.

Rather than me explaining Dobronin school council to you, this time we have this poster made by last year’s school council so they can do it in their own words.

You can read more about their School Parliament on their website, including a list of their achievements and photos from their residential event.

After the meeting the teachers from the other schools commented on how little the teachers from Dobronin had said in the meeting and how they had put their hands up to speak and waited to be asked like the students. The teachers from Dobronin felt this was very important as it stopped the students always looking to them for answers. We then had a very interesting discussion on how careful teachers have to be to not unduly influence the opinion of the school council. A school council coordinator pointed out that this can be an even bigger problem in class meetings. So how do you ensure that the teacher does not sway the opinions being aired?

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Great ideas from Brno for effective school council meetings

School council meeting in Brno
The screen at the top of the photo was used to display images of the topics being discussed when appropriate, the rest of the time the minutes were displayed there as they were typed up.

Today we’re sitting in Masarova School in Brno, the Czech Republic’s second city. Again we’ve been lucky to witness an excellent school council meeting, albeit one that was very different to the one we saw yesterday.

This meeting was more formal, not least in the room layout,but there was still a good deal of respect and understanding between the pupils. Again, the range of issues they covered was impressive and would ring bells for UK school councils: communication with the whole school, school dinners, fundraising, the school council’s budget and how to get more teachers involved with the school council.

There were a few things that stood out to us as useful ideas that other school councils could use:

Have the minutes displayed as they are being typed. This allows everyone to see that they are being recorded accurately and see that an action plan has been agreed – if you use action-focused minutes.

The three chairpeople
The three chairpeople supported one another well and ensured that virtually everyone (22 out of 24 school councillors) contributed during the meeting.

Have people in supporting roles. There were three chairs and two secretaries. One person took the lead as each but the others helped out and ensured that everyone was seen and all notes were taken down.

Don’t just choose the oldest students to chair. In this school the three chairs seemed to be some of the youngest people in the meeting, but they were enthusiastic and did an excellent job of moving the discussions along.

Have large name badges for everyone in the room. All teachers and students had these and it meant the secretaries could easily record who was doing what.

Print out the minutes at the end of the meeting to give to everyone so they know what was discussed and what their action points are.

The two secretaries
The two secretaries typed up the minutes as the meeting was going and they were projected on to a screen that everyone could see. At the end of the meeting they printed out the minutes for all the school councillors.