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Newsletter 8: Planning projects, factory schools and student voice good practice

Hello from involver – newsletter number 8

We hope all your chocolate eggs haven’t melted in the sunshine.

Resource: Setting targets and planning a project

These free downloads are something we created for Parliament’s Education Service (PES) to help schools prepare for entering the Speaker’s School Council Award. It’s the second in a series of four sessions to help school councils run projects. The download is in three parts, one at the bottom of this page and the next two on page two:
http://speakersschoolcouncil.org/resources

Video: MPs’ and school councillors’ tips on project planning

We’ve also made these six videos for PES to help schools think about why school councils are important and how to plan and run projects. There are loads of great tips and inspiration for any school council or action team. Watch them all here:
http://involver.org.uk/2011/04/project-planning-and-evaluation-videos-for-school-councils/

Competition: Winner of free half-day of training

Welcome to all our new subscribers who signed up over the last couple of months. The winner of the half-day training is Morgan from Warwickshire, congratulations to them and commiserations to everyone else. Here’s what you could have won:
http://involver.org.uk/school-council-training-and-student-voice-support/

Article: How running your school like a factory can make it more creative

A lot has been said about how schools are too much like factories to be effective, but one school we’ve come across recently is using the ideas of industrialist, W. Edwards Deming to make their school more responsive to student voice. Here are our thoughts:
http://involver.org.uk/2011/04/how-running-a-school-like-a-factory-can-improve-student-voice/

Research: Student voice good practice

We came across the school above as part of the mad rush around the country we’ve been on over the last month to complete research for the Office of the Children’s Commissioner (OCC) in to good practice in student voice. We’ve seen some exciting and inspiring stuff, and it’s all written up now. We’ll be sure to share it with you as soon as the OCC publish it. See more of the OCC’s work:
http://www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/

News: School council chair runs AV debate

Soon Britain will be deciding on whether it wants a new voting system. We think this is a great opportunity for schools to look at how democracy works in their school. This school council has taken up this challenge and is hosting a debate between two local MPs on the Alternative Vote (AV) vs First Past the Post (FPTP):
http://www.getwokingham.co.uk/news/s/2091605_av_debate_at_ranelagh_school
Resources on AV/FPTP to use in your school: http://www.ycsay.co.uk/freeresources.html

Resource: Pilot the Student voice-o-meter

We’ve created a new online tool to help students research student voice in their school, understand who it’s working for and who it’s not. We’re looking for a few schools to pilot it. Let us know if you’re interested by emailing info@involver.org.uk. Find out more here:
http://www.studentvoiceometer.org.uk

Campaign: Every1counts participatory budgeting in schools

We believe that if schools really value student voice they need to involve students in  how the school spends its money, so we’ve teamed up with the Participatory Budgeting Unit and the Citizenship Foundation to support schools to involve the whole school in this process. We are currently seeking funding from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation to enable us to create training and resources. Find out more and sign-up to be considered for the pilot:
http://www.every1counts.org.uk

Hope you have fun over the extra long weekend!

Greg and Asher

P.S. Greg was very keen for us to put in an egg-related joke. I hope you’ll agree that I showed eggscelent taste in resisting the temptation to do so.

http://twitter.com/doingdemocracy
http://facebook.com/involver.org.uk

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Project planning and evaluation videos for school councils

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.

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Student voice-o-meter is born!

Happy friday everyone,

For the last few months, we’ve been working on an exciting new student voice/school council tool called the Student Voice-o-Meter. We’ve worked closely with two very talented people, Robert Johnson doing the amazing illustration, and Derek Winton pulling all the database and code stuff together. We’re extremely grateful for their help, ideas and talent in making the voice-o-meter come alive.

Put simply, it’s a student-led tool that helps schools to look at what’s good and bad about student voice or their school council. And how it can be improved. Here’s a wee preview:

Involver : Student voice-o-meter from bitsOfBobs on Vimeo.

The Student Voice-o-Meter is very young at the moment, and needs to work with some friendly schools to help him to grow. It’s really hungry and would love some data from your school.

That means we’re looking for three or four schools to give it a trial, get some support from us, and tell us what they think. When it’s up and running, we’ll give those schools free access to the tool. Forever.

So if you’re a teacher or a student, we’d love to hear from you.

Take a look at www.studentvoiceometer.org.uk and if you’re interested, then get in touch with us at info@involver.org.uk.

You can also follow the Student Voice-o-meter on twitter..

Make sure to follow Bits of Bobs on twitter too. You can hear all about his illustration and sandwich adventures.

Greg

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involver blog Newsletters

Newsletter 3: Why bother, audit, training and fantasy football

Hello from involver: Newsletter number 3!

The summer break is almost upon us (or already here, depending on where in the UK you are), so we hope you’ve had a great year!

Here’s a round up of what we’ve been up to over the last month:

Blog: School councils and student voice: why bother?
Greg says, ‘I’m working from Scotland for most of this week, which meant a very long eight hour train journey! After a double espresso, I was feeling a bit reflective about some of the things that we’re doing with involver and why we’ve been doing them.’ Here are his thoughts:
http://involver.org.uk/2010/07/school-councils-and-student-voice-why-bother/

Training: Making your school council READY!
Lots of schools are thinking about how they can improve their school council or student voice next year – we can help you make it READY (yes, that’s an acronym, have a look here if you want to know what for):
http://involver.org.uk/2010/07/school-council-training-get-in-touch/

Resource: Great set of student voice resources from Australia
Asher came across this series of presentations and supporting resources, which was created by Nick Rate, a trainer from Australia. He’s recorded it all so the people he supports in far flung places down under can access them, but of course it means we all can, we love the internet:
http://www.jogtheweb.com/run/AlhYPd3PMcUd/Student-Voice

Video: Make Your Voice Heard: Discover Democratic Education
A great video from the States about why ‘doing democracy’ in schools is so important. It is included in the set above, but worth a special mention:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_LbZ3XcfK4

Project: Speaker’s School Council Awards 2011
After a hugely successful opening year, you can now register your interest in the Speakers School Council Awards 2011. It’s a great way to get your achievements recognised, so to get involved, hop over to:
http://www.speakersschoolcouncil.org

Evaluation: Student voice/school council progress this year?
How have you been getting on with student voice, this year? It’s not easy to get right, and it still takes work and support even when it’s a success. We’ve built a very short audit tool to help you reflect. Fill it out and we’ll even provide you with personalised feedback and ideas if you want us to:
http://involver.org.uk/participate/simple-student-voice-audit/

Network: A new Student Voice and School council Linkedin group
For those of you that use Linkedin (for those who don’t: it’s kind of like a professional Facebook), we’ve set up a group to connect and inform people about student voice and school councils. We’re still finding our way around LinkedIn, but our teacher friends tell us it’s very useful. So take a look, and join at: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=3089339

Networking-fun: Fantasy Democraball!
We’ve set up a fantasy football mini-league for our friends, colleagues and contacts, so please join and invite oithers.  You don’t need to know anything about football, just how to add up to £100,000,000. It’s a head-to-head league, so each game you’ll be playing against another person from the citizenship/student voice/youth democracy world (your skill in beating them will be a good ice-breaker topic for when you next meet them at a conference). It’s free to sign up. Once you’ve picked your team use this code to join the ‘Democraball!’ league: 116742-35727
http://fantasy.premierleague.com

So have a great summer!

And remember, if you want to get in touch about anything we’re up to, then please email us at info@involver.org.uk. We’re also always keen to hear about and share good practice, new resources or developments in student voice.

Greg and Asher @ involver

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involver blog Newsletters

involver newsletter 2: School council ideas, problems and solutions

If you want to our newsletter in your inbox each month, put your email address in the ‘get our newsletter box’ in the top right of this page.


Hello from involver – newsletter number 2

Hope you’re all doing well and enjoying the sun and World Cup. We’ve created some new resources and found a few things that you and your schools might find useful, so here they are …

Resource: Pupil interview panels – getting it right
After a lot of misconceptions in the press about what this involves, we’ve written a brief guide to getting the most out of interview panels that involve students.
http://involver.org.uk/2010/04/pupil-interview-panels-getting-it-right/

Resource: More student voice ideas, issues and some solutions
Some really great ideas and suggestions came up from training we’ve run recently for ASCL, in London, and Wolverhampton Local Authority in, well, Wolverhampton. You or schools you work with may find them useful and we’d find it really useful if you add any suggestions of your own.
http://involver.org.uk/2010/06/school-council-ideas-and-student-voice-issues/
http://involver.org.uk/2010/06/common-school-council-issues-with-solutions/

Resource: Excellent World Cup learning activities
You know we couldn’t get through this newsletter without one World Cup resource, and this one from LSIS is great (if you don’t work in post-16 we’re sure you resourceful involvers could adapt it).
http://www.excellencegateway.org.uk/media/Post16%20Citizenship%20Support%20Programme/Football_supplement_FINAL.pdf

Website: Got a school council website? Add it to our showcase
We’re building up a list of great school council websites – if you have would like to be featured here, please email us at info@involver.org.uk
Tiffany Ryan of Changemakers has been helping us out with this – thanks Tiffany!
http://involver.org.uk/links/school-councils-websites/

Also, if you think our site is useful and want to help others find it, please link to us on your blog or website.

Event: Speaker’s School Council Awards
After 2,500 schools registering interest, hundreds of schools have applied to the Speaker’s School Council Awards. We helped Parliament and the excellent team of judges to whittle the entries down to twenty. Each of these fantastic school council projects will attend an exciting awards ceremony in Parliament on June 23rd. John Bercow, the Speaker of the House of Commons, will award a winner in each age category, so thanks to everyone for applying! You can see schools that have been shortlisted at:
http://www.parliament.uk/education/special-events-and-programmes/speakers-school-council/

Event: AGON – Ancient Greek-style political drama debate
On the 6th of July secondary students from Enfield will be running this innovative event which encourages discussion on issues about media and celebrity through any medium, including drama, dance, music and film. Anyone and everyone is invited to be part of the audience and take part. It’s at the Scoop Amphitheatre next to the GLA buildings by Tower Bridge, London, fittingly.
Email mark.barrett@kingsmead.org for more details.

Video: Kids taking charge – India-style
Ever visit the TED website? It’s one of our favourites. Here’s a link to an inspiring eight minute talk on the ‘I can bug’ developed by Kiran Bir Sethi of Riverside School, Ahmedebad, India.
http://www.ted.com/talks/kiran_bir_sethi_teaches_kids_to_take_charge.html

Research: PSHE in schools and empowering students
Researchers from Brighton University need your help to collect responses from students on how they get to have a say in what topics should be included in PSHE. They are also seeking their views on the curriculum delivered in schools currently. Please give this link to your students and colleagues:
https://eforms.crawley.gov.uk/af3/an/default.aspx/RenderForm/?F.Name=AVhVYHSESfL

Networking-fun: Democraball!
Democraball! runs every month and new players and supporters are always welcome. It’s now got a Facebook group so if you’re in London, and fancy a (very amateur) game of five a side football, then join the group or get in touch at info@involver.org.uk.
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/group.php?gid=127543770612104

Remember, if you want to get in touch about anything we’re up to, then please email us at info@involver.org.uk. We’re also always keen to hear about and share good practice, new resources or developments in student voice.

Thanks!

Greg and Asher @ involver
If you want to our newsletter in your inbox each month, put your email address in the ‘get our newsletter box’ in the top right of this page.

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Is your school council counter-cultural?

The revolutionary school council? (They're supposed to be wearing berets :-))
The revolutionary school council? (They're supposed to be wearing berets :-))

Culture is a great thing, it gives us a sense of identity, place and often purpose too, but it doesn’t do much for progress. In many ways culture is the embedding of a certain way of doing things through unquestioning repetition.

All major changes in industry, science, religion, society and thought have come from people or ideas that went against the prevailing culture. For the purposes of this blog, I’m going to call this counter-culture; it sets out with one maxim:

  • We do not accept a view simply because it is stated by someone in a position of authority; it has to be proved to be of value to us.

Counter-culture is absolutely necessary for any society (or institution) that wants to learn and improve. Having assumptions challenged means the good ideas grow stronger and the poor ones are done away with. It recognises the need for constant re-evaluation (which is very different from constant change).

It seems to me that this is what should be at the heart of all education: working out from first principles what is valid, not basing our ideas on assumptions. So to what extent are our educational institutions counter-cultural? How do they inculcate this approach? I would argue that in most cases they don’t, they in fact do exactly the opposite.

In almost every school in the country there is a school/pupil/student council (or it may go by some other name on a similar theme). The aim of each of these is ‘to improve the school’, but how many really have the tools to do it? Most are given a narrow set of responsibilities and very limited scope in which to carry them out.  Will this ever excite, represent or challenge most of the students or staff? If not, why are we doing them in school?

A number of questions I have been asked or that I have had to ask myself over the last couple of weeks have really brought this into focus for me:

  • From secondary school pupils:
    • Should staff set the agenda for our school council meetings?
    • Should we (the school council) be allowed to talk about and make statements on whatever is important to pupils?
    • Should staff play a role in selecting school council members?
  • From other researchers/practitioners in the field:
    • Are school councils merely there to deal with issues as they arise or should they create policy to pre-empt issues?
    • Does the headteacher lead the pupils in a school or does s/he just manage the staff?
    • Is it better to have a ‘learning council’ than a ‘pupil council’? (The suggesting being it puts learning at the heart of what it does, but I ask, ‘why demote pupils from being at the heart of what it does?’)
  • From discussions with an ex-school student leader from Greece:
    • What can a school council do if it’s not listened to? (In Greece they go on strike or occupy the school)

When staff allow students space to challenge they are forced into a real debate and both ‘sides’ have to question their own assumptions. Where schools just get students to help them with the things staff want to do there will be positive change, but it will be limited, never revolutionary.