Although the school council is doing a lot people don’t know about it.
The suggestion
Whenever the school council does anything make a plaque and stick it up in a relevant place – or as relevant a place as you can find. You want to have the school covered in them.
Plaques could just be laminated card, but the better they look the more important the school council will be seen to be.
The outcome
People are always reminded of the ability of the school council to make change; therefore they are more likely to involve the school council when they want to change something.
It becomes obvious where the school council has not managed to have an impact yet.
Additional ideas
You could develop a logo for the school council to put on these plaques and to help identify the school council.
This is just one way of promoting the school council. The most important thing is to have a strong, regular structure of class meetings and feedback so everyone in the school knows how they are involved in making changes in the school.
The previous two ideas have suggested a couple of ways to improve how meetings are chaired and broaden the scope of issues that meetings cover. But how do you involve the youngest children in your school? Sitting them in a meeting, no matter how well run, can be difficult. Here’s a way to get them involved and learning how to participate.
The issue
Including Reception and KS1 (children aged 4-7) in school council meetings is difficult for them and everyone else.
The suggestion
Rather than having children of this age in meetings ask teachers in their classes to set aside 15-20 minutes per week when members of the school council can come and ask them a question. This is how it would then work:
School council decides on one question to ask Reception and KS1 on an issue that directly involves them. This same question will be asked to all Reception and KS1 classes.
Just before the allotted time Reception and KS1 teachers should organise their classes into groups of 3-5.
Two members of the school council go to each Reception and KS1 class to introduce the question and record responses. This is what they should do in each class:
Introduce themselves. (30 seconds)
Remind the class what question they were asked last time. (1 min)
Explain what has happened as a result of their views from last week. (2 mins)
Explain this week’s question. (1 min)
Get all groups to discuss the question and come up with an answer they all agree on. (5 mins)
Get one person from each group to stand up and explain the decision they came to. (5 mins)
This should be written down or recorded by the school council reps – the easiest way to do this is by video camera or voice recorder.
Thank the class and explain when they will be back. (30 seconds)
The school council reps go over the views of class and summarise them in a couple of sentences.
These summarised views are reported back to the school council to form the basis of their decision, or to feed in to it.
The outcome
Young children have the opportunity to genuinely input in to decisions that affect them.
They start to practice skills of: expressing opinions, compromise, taking turns, reporting back and chairing.
Additional ideas
You could create a more direct democratic structure by asking everyone to vote after their little discussions, and recording these votes and aggregating them across the school.
It is very helpful for the school council reps to have a script to follow. This gives them confidence and ensures that each class is being treated uniformly.
You can also start introducing the concept of a chair person, whose job it is to make sure everyone gets a chance to speak.
Try to make sure that a different person from each small group feeds back each week so all have a chance to practice this. The same should be done with chairing. This can be achieved by having children in the same small groups each week. Within each group people should be numbered. In week 1, all the 1s report back, in week 2, the 2s report back, and so on.
The last little idea I posted was about how to improve chairing of meetings. This one will help to ensure that your meetings cover the range of things they need to.
The issue
Meetings get stuck on a certain issue or type of issue, which results in one or more of the following problems:
The work of the council only deals with one area (e.g. fundraising events) rather than addressing the whole of school life.
The council spends all its time on projects so provides no forum for raising issues.
The council spends all its time raising issues, so takes no action.
The council only discusses issues suggested by the headteacher and doesn’t have time to deal with its own ideas.
The suggestion
Split your meeting in to sections that will remain the same every meeting. Examples:
Issues to be passed on (no discussion needed), Issues that may need discussion, Project updates.
Quick win issues and projects, Longer-term issues and projects
Issues from headteacher, Issues from classes
Allocate an amount of time you will spend on each section. This doesn’t need to be an equal spilt, it should reflect the importance and complexity of each issue.
When drawing up the agenda things need to fit in to one of these sections.
When people are proposing items for the agenda they need to say which section they feel their issue fits under.
This should be done transparently so that people can see why there isn’t time for their item on the agenda.
The outcome
More projects on the go at any one time.
Meetings that have scope for teacher-led consultation, student-identified issues and student-led projects.
Additional ideas
If you are facing more than one of the issues above, you can split each section in to sub-sections, for example by having ‘New issues’ and ‘Project updates’ under each of the project type headings (‘Fundraising & Events’, etc.).
Using the project type headings you could split your council into sub-committees so you have named people working on a variety of issues.
Evaluate regularly: is the split you’ve decided upon creating the mix of discussion you were aiming for? If not propose how it might be changed.
Sample agenda
This is how an agenda drawn up in this way might look
Item
Person
Time
1. Apologies
Secretary
1 min
2. Approval of last minutes
Chair
1 min
3. New issues from classes (max 20 min)
3A. Ensuring homework is returned on time
Jeremy
5 mins
3B. Making water fountains accessible
Asha
5 mins
3C. Late, urgent issues
Chair
4. Project updates (max 20 mins)
4A. Learning survey
Orla
5 mins
4B. Creating a new travel plan
Danny
5 mins
4C. End of term party
Sandra
10 mins
5. Any other urgent project updates
Chair
6. Date of next meeting
Secretary
1 min
You may not always have enough to discuss to fill the maximum time in each section, that’s fine. Don’t allocate the time to other things, finish the meeting early. You decided on the split for a reason based on importance. It should slowly encourage people in to bringing up the kinds of issues that are important.
I’ve just got back from a fantastic couple of days in Warsaw presenting at an event hosted by Fundacja Civis Polonus. I wanted to quickly note down a few things that came up whilst I was there.
As with our experiences in the Czech Repulbic and Ireland, I found that many of the issues are similar to those we face in the UK and there are things we can learn from how they are dealing with them.
The law
In England, Scotland and Northern Ireland there is no requirement to have a school council, although there is a lot of guidance that pushes schools towards them. Wales does require schools to have a school council but the way their law is framed is quite different to the approach Poland has taken.
In Poland since the fall of Communism schools have been required to have a school council. Their law also specifies which areas of school life the school council should be involved in and that all students need to be involved. This sounds great to me and much more useful than a law that specifies structures (numbers of meetings, electoral processes, etc.) but not areas of influence.
Despite this, the issues are around the law not being enforced, or at least the important aspects of it are not. Whilst just about every school has a school council they are not widely involved in school life and they involve very few people. The consensus amongst those at the event was that they tended to focus on just raising money for charity and organising parties. One of the other presenters, Michal from Centrum Edukacji Obywatelskiej (CEO), showed research that suggested that over 40% of students hadn’t even voted in a school council election, let alone been more deeply involved.
So the law in itself isn’t enough, there needs to be support for students and schools to understand what they could and should be doing and help them to do it. That’s the aim of Funacja Civis Polonus, CEO and their partners. We’ll be doing what we can to support them and also to learn what we can from them to support schools in the UK.
The bright coloured text apparently means 'Small Government' Michael Gove would be proud.
Ideas from a Warsaw school council co-ordinator
On Tuesday I visited a primary school in the suburbs of Warsaw (which has students up to the age of about 14) and met with the school council co-ordinator who explained how their school council works. There was lots of good stuff happening but three things jumped out at me as possibly of interest to UK schools:
There is a teacher with responsibility for children’s rights. This is an advocate for the children in the school. It seems to me that it might be good to have a governor with this responsibility.
The school council co-ordinator is elected by students. Teachers who are willing nominate themselves and commit to the job. I imagine they may have to produce a manifesto and/or campaign. Students then elect the person they think will support them best. I wonder how this would work in UK schools? Would it raise the profile of student voice amongst staff and students?
The school council are allowed to use the Tannoy to keep people up to date with what they are doing and to remind the student body of what they need to discuss or do to support student voice. I don’t know how many schools have public address systems like this, but where they exist it could be a useful tool.
We’ve spent quite a big chunk of this year working on a youth engagement guide for social housing providers with Peabody, Home Group, CBHA and CDHT.
That’s a fancy way of saying that we’ve been collecting loads of good hints and tips to help young people who live in houses owned by the council or housing associations to get more involved in their community.
We’ve been working closely with the Our Say Our Way partners and visited lots of young tenants and staff on estates across the country. It’s been brilliant to work with young people outside of schools. Especially since it has helped us to learn about participation in a slightly different setting from what we’re used to.
Wildern School in Southampton approaches student voice through UNICEF’s Rights Respecting Schools model. It’s a great example of how this approach can achieve whole-school improvements. You can read more student voice case studies here.
Key benefits:
A school that is well-suited to the needs of students and the way they want to learn. Students realise that they can (and have) changed major policies and decisions in the school. This helps them to feel engaged in the school.
Better behaviour. The “rights, respect and responsibility” ethos (drawn from the UNICEF’s Rights Respecting Schools Award) gives teachers and students consistent language and expectations across the school. It helps students to understand what right and wrong is.
A proactive and positive student body that improves the school in many ways. Students feel confident to suggest ideas because they are encouraged, supported and trusted to do so.
“It’s good knowing that you can come to school and know that you’re not going to be talked at all day.”
Student council member, Year 9
Top advice
Link everything to the school’s core values, in this case ‘rights, respect and responsibilities’. Links should be made at every relevant opportunity– from schemes of work in the curriculum, to school improvement groups, assemblies, theme days and parental engagement.
Remind people about these values, and how they relate to student-led change. Put posters up around the school and in classrooms, get on the school TVs, and remind staff and students in person.
Trust students. It is their school, and teachers are there to help them learn in an exciting and challenging way.
Set up systems so that students do not have to wait ages to get permission from teachers to move forward. The school has a senior leadership team (SLT) e-proposal form that any student can fill in to email to the SLT. Students have to fully consider an idea or suggestion and can get a quick permission to continue.
Get the right staff member to support it:
“Good student voice doesn’t cost anything. Put the right member of staff to facilitate it, give them time to do it, and start listening to all.”
Deputy headteacher
Start small and take the ‘sowing seeds’ approach. Do not expect to transform participation in school overnight, but start with a small-scale and focused project that you can demonstrate clear results from.
Help reluctant members of staff to see the importance in student voice by asking students to show them the value of student-led projects. They will start to see that students’ ideas are realistic and considered, and that it is not a ‘top-down’ trend from SLT.
Methods used:
Rights Respecting Schools Award
In 2007, students worked on a diversity project with a local school. As part of this, they became aware of UNICEF’s Rights Respecting Schools Award and the three R’s (rights, respect and responsibilities). Students were keen to bring this ethos to Wildern, and successfully encouraged the school to begin a specific project with new Year 7s.
A few years later, this ethos has really taken hold in the school. As the headteacher puts it, the three Rs are “the philosophy of the school” and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child forms “the foundation” of everything they do.
The school have since received their Level 2 Rights Respecting Schools Award and are an excellent example of what can be done with Rights Respecting Schools.
Range of ways for students to get their voice heard
There a wide range of ways for students to have a say in their learning and their school. These are all linked to, and supported by, Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. These different projects include the school council, Voting Voice, school focus groups, student evaluators, department student voice meetings, virtual learning environment (VLE) forums, and class discussions.
Voting Voice
All students can have a direct impact on school issues through the Voting Voice system. An issue is picked that all tutor groups discuss at the same time. Views and votes are collected and collated from across the whole school.
This is a great way to encourage whole-school involvement in big projects, but also small issues in the school too.
School improvement groups
One of the successful ways that students get involved in school improvement is through a range of school improvement groups (SIGs).
These student-led groups that work on particular areas in the school. They include groups like Wildern TV, Community Cohesion, Creative Partnership, Learning to Learn and Developing PLTS (personal learning and thinking skills) in the classroom.
About the school:
Wildern School is a very large and heavily oversubscribed 11–16 comprehensive school serving the Hedge End, West End and Eastleigh areas of Southampton. As a community school it is open seven days a week providing a range of facilities and activities for local adults and young people. The school has been awarded specialist status in Performing Arts and is designated as a High Performing Specialist School Raising Achievement and Transforming Learning. It is also a Leading Edge school.
Involver conducted these case studies for the Office of the Children’s Commissioner in 2011, as part of a project to encourage schools to involve their students in decision making
