Imagine if everyone in your school was on your school council, how much could it get done?
Well, ok, if they were all in one big meeting together, probably not much.
But if you broke the whole school down into small groups, giving each one specific tasks, we might be getting somewhere. If each of those tasks allowed the students doing them to have their say on and take part in improving their school, we’d have some real student voice and see some real changes pretty quickly.
Citizenship gives you the ability to do that, but so few schools seem to make that link. I seldom (if ever) go to a school where the Head of Citizenship and the Student Voice Co-ordinator are the same person, or even collaborate. This is a HUGE missed opportunity.
The skills learned in citizenship lessons are exactly those needed and honed by school councils – so why limit that to just a few people who get elected? The active citizenship element of the citizenship curriculum (and GCSE) could be school council projects, so why not use that time for school improvement?
On top of the active elements, many of the key concepts of citizenship could be looked at through the lens of the school too. I’ve come across a school recently who remodelled their school council directly along the lines of the UK Parliament. Now that would have made for some really interesting citizenship lessons: examining what each role in government is for and whether it could usefully be transferred to a school. I hope that’s the way they did it, involving the whole school in debate about how the country runs and how they want their school to run. Citizenship lessons could also examine, rewrite and improve the school’s policies on discrimination, freedom of speech, unions, etc. On the financial side of things, they could look at where the school’s money comes from and how it is spent and get students to offer advice (or even make decisions) on how this could change.
So where does the school council fit into this? Well, all of this would need to be brought together in a democratic way. A school council could do that, so it would cease to be the key vehicle for turning student voice into action and become instead a facilitating and co-ordinating body: ensuring that everyone in the school had a way to contribute and could do so equally.
So, by pulling together citizenship and student voice you achieve two things:
1. Examples, issues and projects are real for the students: they see them every day and can see the impact they can have on them.
2. All students in the school get to make themselves heard and take action on the core issues facing the school.
If you’re doing this in your school, let us know how it’s going in the comments below.
This post is by Asher Jacobsberg. Asher is an expert in student voice and school councils. He co-founded involver to get schools ‘doing democracy’ rather than just playing at it. involver is a governing member of Democratic Life.
www.involver.org.uk
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Linking citizenship, student voice and the school council
Molly Kearney
Thursday 28 October 2010
Imagine if everyone in your school was on your school council, how much could it get done?
Well, ok, if they were all in one big meeting together, probably not much.
But if you broke the whole school down into small groups, giving each one specific tasks, we might be getting somewhere. If each of those tasks allowed the students doing them to have their say on and take part in improving their school, we’d have some real student voice and see some real changes pretty quickly.
Citizenship gives you the ability to do that, but so few schools seem to make that link. I seldom (if ever) go to a school where the Head of Citizenship and the Student Voice Co-ordinator are the same person, or even collaborate. This is a HUGE missed opportunity.
The skills learned in citizenship lessons are exactly those needed and honed by school councils – so why limit that to just a few people who get elected? The active citizenship element of the citizenship curriculum (and GCSE) could be school council projects, so why not use that time for school improvement?
On top of the active elements, many of the key concepts of citizenship could be looked at through the lens of the school too. I’ve come across a school recently who remodelled their school council directly along the lines of the UK Parliament. Now that would have made for some really interesting citizenship lessons: examining what each role in government is for and whether it could usefully be transferred to a school. I hope that’s the way they did it, involving the whole school in debate about how the country runs and how they want their school to run. Citizenship lessons could also examine, rewrite and improve the school’s policies on discrimination, freedom of speech, unions, etc. On the financial side of things, they could look at where the school’s money comes from and how it is spent and get students to offer advice (or even make decisions) on how this could change.
So where does the school council fit into this? Well, all of this would need to be brought together in a democratic way. A school council could do that, so it would cease to be the key vehicle for turning student voice into action and become instead a facilitating and co-ordinating body: ensuring that everyone in the school had a way to contribute and could do so equally.
So, by pulling together citizenship and student voice you achieve two things:
1. Examples, issues and projects are real for the students: they see them every day and can see the impact they can have on them.
2. All students in the school get to make themselves heard and take action on the core issues facing the school.
If you’re doing this in your school, let us know how it’s going in the comments below.
This post is by Asher Jacobsberg. Asher is an expert in student voice and school councils. He co-founded involver to get schools ‘doing democracy’ rather than just playing at it. involver is a governing member of Democratic Life.
www.involver.org.uk
Related