Pupil voice
Placing value on pupil voice can support thriving by improving academic outcomes, as well improving levels of emotional wellbeing, belonging and self-esteem.
Weare (2015) describes student voice as being “about genuine consultation and the authentic involvement of all students in decision making about their own learning and classroom and school life”. Student voice work can improve a sense of belonging and connectedness and in doing so improve wellbeing and behaviour (Cocking et al., 2020).
It’s important that we ensure that every voice is heard, not just the louder ones. There is no-one who can better tell us the needs of our students than the students themselves.
Thriving
A school that is thriving in this area will:
- actively seek the views of pupils and act on these views in an ongoing, iterative, and meaningful ways (for example, in a 'you said, we did' model)
- consult with pupils during the development of specific policies by asking them to consider the impact of policies on their social, emotional, mental, and physical health
- ask pupils to identify issues that are important to them when it comes to mental health and emotional wellbeing and use this to plan the content of the RSHE curriculum
- use varied ways to seek pupil feedback (for example, paper-based surveys, focus groups, online questionnaires, voting systems, music, multimedia, art)
- have a pupil voice mechanism (such as school council) which directly feeds back to SLT
- have dedicated staff with responsibility for pupil voice and feedback
- ensure that all pupils have opportunities to have their voices heard, and find ways to engage identified 'seldom heard voices'
- consider peer-led ambassador programmes such as Mental Health Ambassadors, Autism Ambassadors, and Race and Equality Champions
- have a dedicated area of the school website for pupils to find information on mental health and emotional wellbeing, involve pupils in the development and maintenance of the area.
Pupil voice
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- The child and young person advocacy service help to ensure that our most vulnerable children can have their opinions heard and listened to.
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Allsorts Youth Project supports LGBT+ children and young people. Their work includes inclusion training in schools which can help schools to understand how to better engage their LGBTQ+ community.
- The Autism and Social Communication Team (ASCT) can support schools to effectively capture pupil views.
- The Double Diamond was developed by the Design Council as a person-centred framework for engagement.
- The Ethnic Minority and Traveller Achievement Service work with school staff to develop the skills and knowledge they need to engage with pupil voice and consider their experiences.
- Roger Hart's Ladder of Children’s Participation describes eight ascending levels of decision-making agency, control, and power that can be given to children and youth by adults.
- The Learning and Behaviour Advisory Team can support schools to effectively capture pupils views.
- Listening Events are an agreed and accredited model for involving children in development and decision making.
- The Lundy Model provides a way of conceptualising a child's right to participation, as laid down in Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
- For schools that are part of the Thought-Full programme mental health ambassadors training can be requested through your termly meetings with your named advisory teacher. For schools that are not a part of the programme the training is offered as a train-the-trainer model.
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Priority 154 can offer specialist training to schools around pupil engagement.
- The West Sussex Sensory Support Team can support schools to effectively capture pupil voice.
- Thought-Full can support schools to effectively capture pupil voice.
- A practical tool developed by MENCAP to effectively capture voice of the child.
- Responsible for the Children in Care Council, Care Leaver's Advisory Board, the Special Educational Needs and/or Disabilities (SEND) groups, Youth Cabinet along with working with our UASC and young parents. The V&P team also run the Exceptional People in Care (EPIC) Awards as well as our Care Leavers Celebration Events every year.
- Framework and standards to develop youth-friendly health and care services. Although not focused on education settings, the framework may be helpful to consider when setting up or evaluating in-school support.
- The Young Carers can help to effectively capture pupil voice.
- The West Sussex Youth Cabinet is made up of 51 young people who are elected every two years. Schools and colleges may wish to promote the Youth Cabinet to their pupils.
- Audit framework developed by the West Sussex Voice and Participation Team to help services to review their youth voice mechanisms.