With all the chat around curriculum and assessment reform, I thought it timely to blog about something that’s been irking me for a while.
Far too often, politicians and commentators are guilty of an over-reliance on their own experience of school. It’s the whole ‘I did XYZ assessment/exam, and IT DIDN’T DO ME ANY HARM’. Despite being simplistic, I think politicians see it as a useful device to come across as passionate, experienced and in touch with ‘normal people’ since it’s harder to argue with someone’s personal experience. That’s all fair enough, but what about those that aren’t heard?
I mean I don’t think that your view of education should be entirely isolated from your immediate experience of it. But that it needs to be balanced with evidence (not cherry-picked international evidence) and strong input from practitioners and students.
Of course, the latest example of this is Gove’s plan to scrap GCSEs that came out yesterday. Gove went school and he had a pretty difficult background. But he did O Levels, and he got good grades. That means that O Levels work, right?
But what about those that aren’t heard?
The point is that we rarely hear from those that the system has failed. What about those who it did actually do some harm to?
They’re not the ones in Sanctuary Buildings, on the benches of the Commons, or shooting the s*@t with Portillo on This Week.
I’m keen to hear more about Gove’s plan, the substance behind it and the link with the Singaporean model. But let’s take personal experience for what it is, the view of the (very successful and influential) individual and not more than that. Sadly, that may be all that counts.
BTW – like the one exam board idea. Professor Frank Coffield was laying into the exam board industry at a recent NUS event I was presenting at. Interesting how Gove’s idea on this is kind of ‘anti-market’.
Here’s a student voice case study from Woodhouse College, a sixth-form college in Barnet.
It’s a slightly different setting from the other examples we’ve looked at. However, the underlying principles remain the same; student voice can influence the core work of the college, it’s flexible, and involves everyone. Importantly, practice is not imposed on staff, but they’re shown the benefits over time.
“We don’t want college to just be a set of A-levels, we want [students] to grow as people.”
Deputy principal
Key benefits
Student voice has been a powerful driver for improving the quality of the college. “Modernising the relationships” between staff and students has helped learning and teaching to improve.
It broadens and deepens the range of experience that students gain from being at the college. They do not leave with just academic qualifications but with skills of interaction, enquiry and representation.
Students have been able to have an impact on all aspects of the college, from the buildings to rules and learning and teaching.
Top advice:
Do not impose practice on staff. See where there is good practice and share this through staff meetings and INSET.
Get every department to plan targets for developing student voice within their subject area.
Create structures that enable students to form and run their own groups based on interest (eg faith groups, sporting and gaming groups, lesbian and gay groups).
Methods used:
Form reps and college council
Each form group elects a representative who becomes their contact to feed back on whole college issues or raise points for improving the college. Form representatives run weekly meetings with their classes which can be just an open forum or may revolve around specific questions that the whole college is discussing. The form representatives meet regularly together with the student support manager and/or deputy principal to collate responses and decide on action plans.
There is also a whole college election for the college council; this means that friendship groups that might be split across form groups – and so be unable to elect one of their number as a representative in any one form – can elect someone who they feel represents them. The college council has its own budget and runs many of the whole college activities. It also works closely with the student support manager and deputy principal and the form reps.
The split between the roles of the form representatives and the college council is not always completely clear, but the form reps are primarily tasked with representing and collecting the views of the whole college and the college council is about creating new opportunities for people to be involved in the life of the college. They are currently working to better define their areas of responsibility and the relationship between them.
Subject focus groups
Certain subject area are very keen to find out how they are serving the learning needs of its students so there are regular surveys and focus groups to draw out this feedback. As this is not uniform across the college those departments that have been getting the most out of it have been encouraged by management to share their experiences in staff meetings and training. By demonstrating the benefits and tried and tested methods of engaging the students’ voices other departments are encouraged to follow suit.
Student-led interest groups
Students in the college are encouraged and supported to set up their own interest groups, clubs and societies. One of the roles of the student support manager is to be positive towards and enable students to create opportunities like this for others. In this way the student experience is deepened for all. Those students who want to set things up develop skills and a sense of agency and those who just want to be part of these groups have far more to choose from.
In this way the college is directly responding to the needs of students. For example, some students wanted a lesbian and gay group, so they were supported to set one up. This is then something they run in the way they feel comfortable with, rather than something which needs to conform to staff expectations of how such a group might run or look.
Volunteering through Envision
Further opportunities for student action and engagement are provided through volunteering projects with the support of the charity Envision. These do not get students to simply help out on someone else’s project, but be entrepreneurial in their own right.
About the college:
Woodhouse College is a sixth form college operating from a single site on the eastern side of the London Borough of Barnet. The college caters for just over 1000 learners. Nearly all 16 to 18 enrolments were on GCE AS/A level courses. A significant proportion of learners travel from other boroughs, particularly Haringey and Enfield.
The catchment area is economically mixed and diverse in terms of social and ethnic backgrounds. In 2005, about half of the learners were from minority ethnic groups, and 56% were female. At age 16, educational achievement is above average in Barnet, but well below average in Haringey and Enfield.
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
Students are able to communicate in a relaxed and confident manner.
Creativity and student voice are seen as interlinked, so this helps the school be creative in how it involves students and in turn students have made lessons more creative.
Lessons have become more engaging as a result of student comments in response to consultation on the raising achievement plan (RAP, the school development plan).
“It’s absolutely tangible, you can see it, the confidence of young people and the confidence of teachers to listen to young people. [Pupils] really make their own choices now.”
Year 4 teacher
Top advice
What you are doing has to be purposeful. Students need to know what their role is and that that it has potency. Set objectives, goals and targets. It is not effective if the students are not sure why they are doing it.
Have weekly class meetings so you can deal with everything that comes up.
Make sure that the class representatives have someone in their class to take notes for them. That way they can take a full part in the meeting and still have notes to help them remember everything they need to relay to the school council.
Have two-year terms on school council, so you roll over experience and expertise.
Methods used:
Young Consultants
“It’s an amazing learning curve for them. The children involved can speak and think about how they learn and what they want to be learning about.”
Creative Partnerships Co-ordinator
Through Creative Partnerships Studfall has been working with a local secondary school to develop creativity in their curriculum. They feel that rather than creativity just being about the arts, it is about how they involve children in all of their work. So they formed a group of young consultants (YCs) to be the pupil voice within the Creative Partnerships work they were doing. To ensure this was not tokenistic they gave them clear roles and training.
Initially the YCs were involved in interviewing practitioners that the school was considering working with, but it has grown from there. They decided that the YCs should observe the sessions being run by the practitioners so they could further develop their understanding about what skills a good creative practitioner uses. This has then grown in to involving the YCs in planning sessions with adults and researching how Studfall pupils like to learn. This practice is now expanding throughout the school with several teachers working through schemes of work with YCs.
To develop this creativity it has been essential to give pupils the space and freedom to make a lot of choices about their learning.
The school council meets weekly to discuss issues that have come up in the class council meetings (also held weekly). These meetings happen during assembly time, so when one half of the school is having an assembly the other half is meeting in class groups.
Pupils were finding that not everyone was confident or able to speak up during class meetings, so they created two other methods for people to speak more privately to their representatives. Every Wednesday there is a school council surgery. There is also a suggestions box in to which people can either put anonymous suggestions or their names if they would like to speak to a school councillor, but not in front of the whole class.
Whole school involvement in writing the RAP
The school council has been involved in running a consultation on the RAP. Each week they asked all the classes in the school a different question related to an area of the RAP. Their responses have been fed into the RAP and also fed back directly to teachers. Pupils can see the effects in their classrooms and are very pleased.
“Some children were saying there’s not enough challenges at the start of lessons, so they were just sitting there waiting for all the other children to come in. So we talked to our teachers at their team meeting and we told them. And they took on what we said, and now we have lot more, so they’ve listened. Children are actually pleased.”
Year 6 pupil
Buddies
Everyone in the school has a buddy, Year 6 are buddies with Year 4 and Year 5 are buddies with Year 3. These are assigned when the new Year 3 join the school so that they have people who can show them around and help them settle in.
The buddy system extends beyond this though with students doing shared activities and lessons with their buddies and buddies helping one another academically. This relationship persists throughout their time at the school and the pupils clearly enjoy being buddied up, in fact they are arguing at the moment for more time to spend with their buddies.
About the school
The school is much larger than average. A few pupils are from a range of minority ethnic groups. A third of all pupils have special educational needs and/or disabilities which is significantly higher than usual. There is designated special provision for 33 pupils with statements of special educational needs and, together with those in school, they account for 10 per cent of pupils. This is exceptionally high compared to other schools.
The proportion of pupils known to be eligible for free school meals is below average. A breakfast club is organised by the school each morning for approximately 30 pupils. Two headteachers lead and manage the school.
Here’s the first part of our findings from a brilliant research project that we worked on for the Children’s Commissioner.
It’s all about best practice in student voice, and here’s a short ‘How to’ guide with as much advice as we could possibly fit onto two pages. Feel free to download and share.
You can download here: [download id=”237″]
The research came from in-depth research in 16 schools across England who have great student voice, and looking at the values, principles and practices that underpin their success. Great to see so many and varied benefits that schools are seeing. There’s a full report to be issued in a few weeks.
Thank you to the schools that took part, and for the Children’s Commissioner for getting us in to do such a great project!
Loads of school council elections are taking place across the country, but many of them aren’t organised as well as they could be.
Often this is perfectly understandable; running the election is sometimes thrust upon an unsuspecting teacher, so here’s a complication of the resources we’ve got to help you out!
1. A set of 15 minute short tutor time activities to help plan a school council election:
3. Our school council reps toolkit might help students understand what’s involved as a school councillor (sometimes if they’re not sure what’s involved, they won’t put themselves forward).
Welcome back to school. Hope you all had a fun summer!
To give you a quick idea of what we’ve been up to…..
In between lovely holidays to Loch Ness, Aberdeen, Rugby and France, we’ve been doing lots of work on the Smart School Council Community, a charity we’re setting up and supporting.
It’s led by fifteen founding schools who we know have AMAZING student voice/school councils. Any young person, teacher or governor can join for FREE and get some help (or help others) with your school council. Good deal, right?
As a social enterprise based in Tottenham, we’ve been busy helping out after the riots. As well as donating and sorting clothes, Asher’s been writing about the subject and also been on the radio talking about it. That second link features a hilarious picture of him.
Related to these events, and the questions about education and engagement in the UK today, we’re working on an exciting new film project with the Carib Theatre Company and Franklyn Lane Productions. We’ll keep you posted.
We also had a great time at the UKYP Annual Sitting. LOADS of really engaged young people who are a credit to their areas and the UKYP too. Here’s Asher next to our stand:
And here’s our map where you could rate your school council:
Finally, don’t forget that you can get us in to do some training in your school or cluster of schools.
We’ve got lots of training booked, including trips to the Republic of Ireland and the Czech Republic.
