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Tag: representatives
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Welbourne pupils take over involver
On Friday 11 November, Tottenham-based, social enterprise, involver, will be taken over by pupils from Welbourne Primary School. Four pupils will be made Directors of involver for a day, running the organisation and deciding on its future strategy.
This is being organised as part of a national day of action by young people, co-ordinated by the Children’s Commissioner for England, under the banner of Takeover Day 2011.
The enterprising young pupils will be writing new resources for other schools to use, blogging about their day, calling up Haringey schools to talk about working together and creating a strategy for involver to follow for the rest of the year.
Martell, 11, who will be one of the Directors for a day, is excited by the opportunity, “I think it’s good that we’re going to get to run involver, because their business is about schools and kids, so we’ll have good ideas about what they could do.”
Asher Jacobsberg, one of involver’s founders and it’s (current) Director, said, “We help schools to get young people learning about democracy by playing an active part in running their schools, so this is a great opportunity for us to practice what we preach. I think we’ll finish this day with better, more relevant ideas for how we can help primary-age students than we could come up with in a year on our own.”
Maggie Atkinson, Children’s Commissioner for England said: “I am very excited about our fifth Children’s Commissioner’s Takeover Day this year, and I look forward to hearing about what people are doing. The day provides such a brilliant opportunity for children and young people to make a difference to their schools and communities, have their voices heard and challenge the stereotypes about them that we hear too often. Children and young people have so much to offer. They bring ideas, imagination and energy which can really make a difference to organisations.”
The Welbourne pupils will start by learning about what a social enterprise is and then move on to the real work: creating a strategy for involver’s work with primary-age pupils. Once they’ve thrashed that out they will be starting to put it in to action.
Pupils might end up outlining books to help school councils involve the whole school, organising events for Haringey schools, or writing sessions for training other young people. Involver are clear that what the Welbourne pupils do really is up to them, they are the bosses.
Involver have committed to carry through on the strategies decided by the young people and credit them as colleagues on any materials arising from their work.
Download the media release: [download id=”239″]
The new framework for school inspections released by Ofsted today removes all pressure on schools to involve their students in self-evaluation and improving their own community.
When schools are being blamed for not connecting young people with their communities, a key tool that helped young people to see that their communities are what they make them, not something that happens to them, has been swept away.
Under the previous Ofsted framework student voice (and thereby the importance of students to the school community) was emphasised in three ways:
- Schools had to show in their Self-Evaluations Forms (SEFs) how they had engaged with and listened to students as part of their on-going strive to improve.
- Ofsted inspectors met with students who had been elected by their peers as their representatives (the school council).
- Ofsted wrote a clear, simple letter direct to students (via the school council) explaining the key findings of their inspection.*
All of these have disappeared.
All of them showed students that they had a stake in the school and their own education, they were not just raw material with which good teachers would make good grades and bad teachers would make bad grades.
Now it has been pointed out to me that good schools will do this anyway and I’m sure they will because they’ve seen the benefits, but it’s about getting those other schools to try it so they also see the benefits. Showcasing and sharing good practice is important but it can never provide the same impetus for schools that feel too nervous or busy to try things that the carrot/stick of an Ofsted grading can.
Once schools do get over that first hurdle they see how teaching and learning can be improved, how pupils’ self-confidence and communication skills grow and how pupils come to have a greater respect for a community they feel respects them. One of the most positive things Ofsted did was help schools take that first step. I fear that the new Ofsted framework will further widen the gap between those students who feel their community listens to them and those who don’t. We will end up with schools that produce young people with high grades but no skills with which to apply them. No understanding of teamwork, compromise, respect or self-determination. That’s not to say that the schools that do actively encourage students to express their views, collaborate and be critical thinkers won’t also get high grades, far from it, but their students will have so much more on top of the grades.
So what could Ofsted do? Well, given that they’re not going to reinstate the SEF, they should at least do numbers 2 and 3 above. They should extend to students the system that they will be releasing in October for surveying parents; this will give a much more complete and detailed picture (as staff and governors will be spoken to directly). They also need to define far more carefully what they mean by ‘take account of the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of pupils when judging the overall effectiveness of the school’. But if they don’t act fast I think we will see a still nascent area of learning, student voice, disappear in many schools and with it any constructive way for many students to feedback on, engage with and improve their schools.
* This was also published online and I bet it was pretty useful to many parents too, as it was much easier to read than the formulaic, lengthy and jargon-heavy main reports. Have a look for yourself (the letter to the pupils is at the bottom): Welbourne Primary School Ofsted Report 2009
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Riots, discipline and student voice
I was involved in a short debate on BBC WM’s breakfast show this Monday. I was put up against Nick Seaton from the Campaign for Real Education, who campaigns against progressive education.
Have a listen and see what you think:
As with any interview like this no one gets the time they want to put across all the points they’d like to, but I hope I managed to get across: you don’t change people’s behaviour by repeating the rule, you change behaviour by getting them to understand the reasoning behind it.
The detail of what I was trying to say is best expressed in my post from last week: Old fashioned discipline is not what rioters needed
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School council interview questions
If you’re a teacher who’s about to be interviewed for a new job by a school council or other group of students it can be daunting to prepare for. Below is a list of questions that school councils we’ve worked with have asked and some general advice.
- Questions the school council might ask you
- What the school council might be looking for
- General advice for interviews with a school council
Questions the school council might ask you
- What activities should we have in our school and why?
- How would you make our school better?
- What would you do if there was a pupil who is angry with his/her friend?
- How do you help children have fun?
- What would someone have to do to get sent home?
- What does bravery mean to you?
- Why do you like teaching?
- What did you enjoy most when you were at school?
- What’s the best lesson you ever taught?
- If you weren’t a teacher, what would you be doing?
- Who do you most admire?
- How would describe your teaching style?
- What’s your favourite subject (other than the one you teach)?
- What do you think about homework?
What the school council might be looking for
A teacher who:
- Is fair (particularly in terms of being even-handed)
- Runs a classroom in such a way that everyone can learn
- Is enthusiastic about her/his subject/teaching
- Likes young people
- Will challenge them
- Will challenge bullying
- Has a sense of humour
- Is a problem-solver
- Is an expert
- Is a professional
- Is caring
- Is ‘strict in a polite way’ (i.e. doesn’t scream and shout to create discipline)
- Is fun (i.e. likes to have fun and help others have fun)
- Can make learning fun
- Acts the same with pupils and teachers
General advice for interviews with a school council
- Talk to the students – If there’s an adult in the room (there should be) remember that she/he is just there to support the students, your interview is with the students, so direct your answers to them.
- Ask them questions – ‘Does that happen in your school?’; ‘What do you think needs changing?’. This shows that you would listen to them if you came to the school. It’s also a great way for you to find out more about the school. You can even use their answers in your interview with the adult interview panel: ‘When I was talking to your school council, they said that …, which I would try to address by …’
- Use concrete examples – ‘In my current school …’; ‘When I was at school …, so now I …’
- Relax – Difficult in an interview, but you’re in front of young people all the time, right? The students might not be as understanding of your tension as adults, never having been in a job interview, but remember these students just offer a recommendation to the full interview panel, they don’t make the decision.
- Be yourself – The school council will be frustrated if they think you’re trying to spin them a line. They want to respect you and get on with you: none of you will be able to tell if that can happen if you’re not being yourself. If you do get on with them then great, if not, maybe it’s not the school you want to be at anyway.
- Be honest – This will be respected far more than you making something up on the spot.
- Take time to think – Just as in any interview, they’re looking for a considered answer, not a quick one. As students they appreciate time to think about their answers: if you show that you understand that and sympathise, they’ll warm to you.
If you want advice on how to set up school council interviews, have a look here: Pupil interview panels – getting it right
What questions have you asked or been asked in interviews with a school council or other students? Do you have any tips for people facing a school council interview panel?
Add them in the comments and I’ll update the list above.
Find more great school council resources at the Smart School Councils Community.
We helped make this series of six videos for Parliament’s Education Service. As well as encouraging schools to enter the Speaker’s School Council Award they contain loads of great tips from MPs and school councillors of all ages on how to make any project a success.
If your school council or project team is getting a bit stuck have a watch of some of these, they might just give you a few ideas.
Why enter the Speaker’s School Council Award
Getting ideas and choosing a project
Planning your project
Keeping your team on track
Keeping people informed and involved
Evaluating your project
These videos were all shot, directed and edited by the fantastic Kwame Lestrade of Franklyn Lane Films.