Tag: Strategy

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involver blog Resources

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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Citizenship involver blog

Should we run a school?

A couple of days ago on Twitter I noticed a couple of tweets by Fiona Blacke, the Chief Exec of the NYA (National Youth Agency) that really quite excited me:

  • @edballsmp Great to hear charities can now sponsor academies. More info to follow??
  • if youth charities can run schools can we expect these will have pupil voice and empowerment at the centre of the way they run? Exciting!

    • Incredibly exciting, I thought. The chance to put into practice what we preach. Rather than looking down from our pulpits on the pupils and teachers we want to influence, we could actaully be part of running a school.  I can’t think that there would be a better way to advance our thinking on the real power and possibilities of pupil voice . It would also provide a great example to other schools, not to mention the possibilities it would provide to the pupils in such a school.

    Now, as you probably know, involver’s not exactly the most established organisation yet, so I felt it was a bit flippant for me to suggest that we run a school, but I did anyway, kind of.  Well actually I posted a question on Twitter to a few other organisations that I thought might be interested and Michael Grimes at the Citizenship Foundation picked up on this and wrote a blog post about it to get the discussion going. I’m continuing it here, so please comment on either blog with your thoughts.

    For me it just seems that this does need to be considered. Leadership by example is the only real leadership. Who’s with me?

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    involver blog

    Case studies, Slovakia, and next steps

    Good news 1:

    Hard work (and many late nights) over the last week has meant that we are pretty much done with the pupil voice case studies that we are writing for the SSAT/DCSF. The schools and LAs that took part (thanks!) are receiving them to sign them off. Be good to get it all wrapped up soon, and we hope it will be helpful to schools./LAs.

    Good news 2:

    At the start of October, we’ve been invited to Slovakia to take part in a three-day meeting about pupil voice in Europe.

    They have been working on a school council project called ‘It’s your choice, use your voice’, and want to hear more about how things are approached in the UK. There’s potential for future cooperation too. Should be a great experience, and lots of fun – full blog to come – take a look at http://www.rcm.sk/en/news.

    Also had interesting meetings with NCB, Send for it/Portland (the company who have bought School Councils UK) and our friend Jem (http://twitter.com/_jemima) on Search Engine Optimisation stuff. 95% of this went over my head but in a stroke of luck, Asher is a web geek, and he managed to follow things.

    In other news, working at home in the kitchen is difficult – I keep eating EVERYTHING.

    Hope all is good.

    Greg

    Categories
    involver blog

    Teacher survey – seeking your views!

    Hello all,

    If you’re a teacher, we’d love to get your views on the type of pupil voice support you need in your school. Click the link below, it should just take a couple of minutes:

    http://involver.org.uk/staffsurvey1

    We’re in the process of creating one for young people, will blog when it’s up.

    Asher’s also been working on a new search facility @ http://involver.org.uk/links. You can search across all the major participation sites from one place – useful!

    Thanks, and hope the first proper week back at school is going well :)

    Greg

    Categories
    involver blog

    Taglines!

    So today we’ve been thinking about taglines for involver.

    Up until now, we’ve gone with ‘engage, impact, enjoy’, which I think is good, but most people have said that it doesn’t actually say what we do. Fair point, so we’re having a bit of a rethink….

    Companies employ shiny PR companies to spend months, and thousands of pounds, on a single line of text in taglines. I guess it’s to get the words, and the feeling that those words create, right.  I wonder how much McDonalds spent to come up with those three words – ‘I’m lovin’ it!’.

    Due to a lack of time, not to mention money, Asher and I have been working on ideas today. This is the list we’ve got so far:

    1. involver : we do whole-school pupil voice for fun
    2. involver : fun and effective whole-school pupil voice
    3. involver: helping schools with fun, sustainable and active pupil voice for all
    4. involver: helping schools with fun and effective whole-school pupil voice
    5. involver: helping schools to enjoy active and effective pupil voice for all
    6. involver: helping schools to enjoy effective whole-school pupil voice
    7. involver: beyond school councils
    8. involver: going beyond school councils
    9. involver: inspiring school councils and more
    10. involver: beyond pupil voice
    11. involver: fun, effective, whole-school pupil voice
    12. involver: smart school councils
    13. involver: inspiring fun and effective pupil voice for all
    14. involver: inspiring fun, effective pupil voice for all
    15. involver: activating pupil voice through school councils
    16. involver: inspiring pupil voice through school councils

    Issues:

    –   We want to focus on pupil voice because it is not prescriptive about the way schools should approach this. However, if we focus on that, then we lose the school councils niche. 95% of schools have them, and there’s a fair proportion that want to improve them. On the flip sude, if we focus on school councils too much, then it looks like we’re telling schools what to do, and not helping them to find a pupil voice model that works for them.

    – My favourites are probably 3 or 13. Although with 3, there’s a worry that ‘helping’ isn’t strong enough. And with 13, is it clear enough? And do we need the ‘and’ compared to 14? So confused!

    Either way, what do you all think? Leave a comment below.

    It would be  great to hear from you on what you think is best – teachers feel free to ask your pupils. If you think of a completely new one, or a combination of the above, let us know! We’re trying to think short, snappy and clear – but they are always the hardest!

    Greg :)

    Categories
    involver blog

    Getting the image right

    We’re sending off letters and plans to a whole load of people at the moment, but it somehow feels like a letter without a logo or a letterhead isn’t a serious one.  We’ve already got someone to agree to help us do something really cool when he comes back from camping (thanks Steve), but in between writing business and project plans I’ve been fiddling around with a few temporary ones. What do you think?

    Simple, might be nice to have the 'i's round the outside each a different colour
    Simple, might be nice to have the 'i's round the outside each a different colour
    Interlocking circles, a bit celtic
    Interlocking circles, a bit celtic
    A really condensed version of the previous one, also interlocking circles, but not very obviously so
    A really condensed version of the previous one, also interlocking circles, but not very obviously so