BEYOND STUDENT VOICETO DEMOCRATIC COMMUNITY

Michael Fielding

An exploratory paperfocussing on

Radical inclusion - involving those whose voices are seldom heardReversing roles - students as agents of adult professional learningCo-constructing the common good - remaking public spaces in schools where adults + young people can have an open dialogue

presented at the day conference

New Developments in Student Voice:Shaping schools for the future

Thursday 12 June 2008Birkbeck College, University of London

11.00 - 15.00

Supported by a grant from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation

We warmly invite and welcome your response

Professor Michael FieldingEducational Foundations & Policy StudiesInstitute of Education, University of London,

Email  m.fielding@ioe.ac.ukTel: 0207.612.6919Mob: 07952.267.050

Towards aTowards aCENTRE FOR RADICALCENTRE FOR RADICAL

STATE EDUCATIONSTATE EDUCATION

20 Bedford WayLondon WC1H 0AL

Website : www.ioe.ac.uk/crse 

Acknowledgements

My thanks to the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation for financial assistance supporting this work.

My thanks to Gill Mullis, Student Voice Co-ordinator at the Specialist Schools & Academies Trust, for her support and for putting me in touch with some of the outstanding examples of innovative work mentioned in this paper.

My thanks, too to the teachers and headteachers and Local Authority colleagues who responded so swiftly and so helpfully to my phone calls and emails, in particular, Ceddy de la Croix (Sandringham School), Leora Cruddas (London Borough of Waltham Forest), Elizabeth Draper (formerly of Haywards Heath Sixth Form College), Alison Peacock (the Wroxham School), and Cassie Shorey (Harding House).

My further thanks to Graham Hanscombe, Principal Advisor, Best Practice & Research, Essex Standards & Improvement Service and to Dr Jane McGregor for many hours of dialogue over a number of years from which this paper and this project emerged.

Lastly, my thanks to Fiona Carnie, Visiting Research Fellow at the London Institute, who works with me on the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation project: her patience and encouragement are beyond measure.

Introduction

This conference paper addresses three issues which provide new and exciting challenges for all those working in ways which further develop a democratic way of life in the field that has come to be known as Student Voice. These issues concern

1 Radical inclusion - involving those whose voices are seldom heard

2 Reversing roles - students as agents of adult professional learning

3 Co-constructing the common good - remaking public spaces in schools where adults + young people can have an open dialogue

The intention of the paper and of the 12th June conference is to explore these matters together and to invite further exchanges of view.

The next phase of our work will involve volunteer schools working with our colleague, Perpetua Kirby, in follow-up conversations, visits and the write up of case studies during the Winter Term 2008 and Spring Term 2009.

These conversations and case studies will then form the basis of a practical resource which we hope will be helpful for schools wishing to develop work in these three domains.

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1 Radical inclusioninvolving those whose voices are seldom heard

1.1 Current contexts, imaginative responses

It is a measure of the coming of age of this phase of what has come to be known as Student Voice that we have gone far beyond the singularity of student ‘voice’ and are beginning to confront some of the hard and serious issues. These not only challenge those of us working in this field, but also challenge all those in our society committed to a more just and more joyful future. Thus, issues of class, race, gender and learning difficulty are now beginning to be taken more seriously and it is aspects of these challenges that this first section of our Esmée Fairbairn Foundation work seeks to understand better and to respond to more wisely.

In Rehearsing for reality – young women’s ‘space to deal with ourselves’ we look at some of the work of Leora Cruddas and colleagues from the London Borough of Newham who supported marginalised young women – girls with EBD – in a range of highly inclusive ways which seem to us to have a wide-ranging resonance across many different contexts and circumstances.

The Teenage Parents Program (TAPP) that Deidre Kelley explores in her work shares some common ground with the Newham project and provides additional insights into the importance, not just of offering safe spaces for marginalised or stigmatised persons in our schools, but also countering and challenging, individually and collectively, dominant presumptions and prejudices.

The last two examples in this section of the paper look, firstly, at some of the ways in which students with Special Needs can not only contribute in groundbreaking ways to mainstream school practices, but also develop highly imaginative, holistic forms of engagement that many outside special schools would wish to emulate. COPS, creativity and the absolute necessity of inclusion gives a brief account of ways in which a major, five year, cross-city student voice initiative in Portsmouth was transformed by the active participation in mainstream contexts of Special Schools students.

The highly innovative work going on at Harding House Special Schoolnot only gives us a feel for what a passionate level of commitment and tenacity can achieve. Student autonomy at Harding House School also reminds us of the importance of developing and co-developing practices which acknowledge difficulty, confront it collectively, and in so doing elicit an energy and joy of response that moves the work forward in ways that could not have been anticipated at its inception.

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1.2 Boundary practices: opening up new territory

Rehearsing for reality – young women’s ‘space to deal with ourselves’

Leora Cruddas’s work with the London Borough of Newham’s two year action research project focussing on the needs of girls with emotional and behavioural difficulties provides a number of imaginative and successful examples of ways in which a group of marginalised students in an already marginalised sub-community can be better understood and supported within a mainstream context. In phase one of the two year project, members of staff were seconded from the LA and developmental work took place in five secondary schools: three single-sex girls’ schools and two co-educational schools. In the second year part of the funding was delegated to schools who appointed a link member of staff who was released to work with the young women.

A range of different groups were formed in project schools. These included peer mentoring groups, conflict management groups, focused group work around a particular topic or theme, groups workshops, Circle Time groups, and outdoor activity-based and problem solving groups. However, one of the most successful strategies involved the use of ‘developmental group work’ which provided a vehicle for reflection, evaluation, action and change and helped to make clear what the young women felt they needed in order to learn and how they wanted their schools to change in order to meet those needs. The intention was to create a space that liberates, one which, in the words of Augusto Boal whose work inspired Leora and her colleagues, ‘a reflection on reality and a rehearsal for future action.’ Although similar to Circle Time, which has its origins in developmental group work, the latter is much less directive and teacher-led.

Not only did the project help to support the young women involved to name and deal with some of the key barriers to learning and participation in school like emotional problems e.g. isolation and lack of self-confidence relationship problems e.g. friendships, parents, romantic relationships,

death and loss academic issues e.g. transitions, lack of oracy opportunities, pressures to

succeed health issues e.g. pregnancy, mental health, body image stereotyping e.g. sexuality, being used as agents of social control,

domestic responsibilities, reputations.

It also highlighted a number of recommendations for institutional development and change. These were that these young women felt they needed to be listened to be heard above the boys be treated as equals have emotional space have friends

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share problems with each other be supported by better pastoral systems

Essentially, in Leora Cruddas’s words, what was being asked for was, ‘the need for a voice and for space (in curricular, material and psychological senses) to explore social and emotional issues – what one young woman referred to as “space to deal with ourselves”’. In some instances the project led, not only to the development of a range of groups and practices, some of which, like workshops on understanding the needs of girls, targeted staff as well as students. It also led to the establishment of things like ‘Girlspace’, a classroom space within a mixed sex school where girls could go at lunchtime.

Teenage Parents Program (TAPP)

Deirdre Kelley’s account of the Teenage Parents Program (TAPP) in a Canadian high school approaches issues of inclusion primarily through a concern to understand how a diverse, constantly changing society might further develop practices that not only enable marginalised groups to develop confidence in their identities, but also to enable them to take part in and contribute to a participatory democracy. Support for minority groups inside and outside schools is, thus, not about creating separate enclaves, but rather about creating confidence, capacity and desire to engage in wider dialogue, discussion and action with peers and adults.

TAPP participants were young women and mothers, mostly living in poverty, many labelled as having learning and emotional disabilities, some of color or immigrants or both, who lacked proficiency in English. All had been stigmatised as teen mothers. TAPP provided on-site day care, a full time teacher who acted as an inclusion facilitator, and a full-time support worker. The programme itself included workshops dealing with a range of pertinent issues.

What is particularly interesting about TAPP is that it did not just provide a safe place for withdrawal and support. It also sought to equip the young mothers with the power to (a) deal with e.g. stigmatisation or derogatory comments and also (b) challenge the prejudices and presumptions they experienced, as often from public welfare organisations as from fellow students. Furthermore, on occasions it provided a radical space within which to explore alternative views of citizenship, including those that saw empowerment, not just as an individual aspiration but as a collective strategy focussing on the need for social change.

COPS, creativity and the absolute necessity of inclusion

In their five year partnership with the City of Portsmouth the University of Sussex co-developed a significant strand of work round student voice as a key strategy for educational renewal. The explicitly stated values of the Sussex team and the inclusive perspectives and inclinations of many of the

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Portsmouth staff with whom they worked laid the basis of some of their more successful work.

Early on in development of the Portsmouth Learning Community (PLC) work a cross-city Student Voice Day was held at one of the city’s Special Schools. Their hosting of the event, together with their full participation in it reinforced and deepened understandings and aspirations, not just of the Sussex University team, but of all students and staff who attended. Those felt encounters and bonds that grew out of that early event subsequently had an enormous effect on the way things developed over the four years’ work that followed. Not only were all subsequent cross-city Student Voice Days co-planned and eventually co-led by a group of students that included young people from Special Schools, some of the most innovative and adventurous PLC work owed its dynamism, creative insight and tenacity to the significant involvement of Special School students.

Two points of particular importance emerge from the inclusive commitment of these developments. Firstly, the active involvement of special school students and staff (one of the key citizenship ASTs in the city and was deputy head of a special school) helped the work to develop a person-centred, social justice orientation that is unlikely to have been so pronounced or so persistent had they not been involved. Secondly, because of special school involvement the Sussex University and Portsmouth LA student voice team were forced to confront difficult issues and through doing so develop responses that were wiser, more effective, more inclusive and, on occasions, much more creative that they would otherwise have been.

Perhaps one of the most compelling examples concerns the developing work of what became known as COPS (Council of Portsmouth Students). This is a city-wide group of students whose remit is to encourage a range of student voice activity in all schools, link with student councils, and offer a young person’s perspective on matters of importance to students themselves and to officers, councillors and community groups. Inevitably one of the issues with which COPS wrestled was how they developed effective forms of two-way communication between themselves and students across the city. With regard to how they let schools know what they were about and how they were getting on their realisation of the inadequacy of sending schools minutes of COPS meetings was immediately made clear by the deputy chair. This young man was from a Special School and he quickly pointed out that many of his peers would not be able to read the minutes and discuss the key issues, even if they were inclined to do so. This led to a wide-ranging discussion about issues of student-friendly communication and the importance of developing an inclusive approach that used modern technology and contemporary culture in imaginative ways.

The upshot was remarkable. With the enthusiastic help of a member of the Sussex University team, the COPS group developed an audio-visual form of communication which incorporated the written minutes on one side of the screen and video clips of dialogue illustrating the topics under discussion on the other. The key point here is that none of this would have been tackled as

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quickly or as imaginatively had the deputy-chair of the COPS group not been from a Special School and the culture of the COPS group not been committed intellectually and interpersonally to inclusion.

Student autonomy at Harding House School

Part of Booker Park, a special school in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, Harding House Sixth Form caters for SLD / PMLD students aged 16 -19. Commitment to student autonomy is central to its work and expresses itself in a range of ways, including IEP targets, the Student Council and Annual Reviews.

There has been a strong drive to increase student involvement in target setting. There was considerable awareness of the institutional dangers of low staff expectation and tokenism; of ‘delayed teaching’ where the impetus of more active decision making in Early Years and Foundation Curriculum is diminished; of a lack of appropriate communication strategies / resources leading to easy options or not bothering at all; and of the inevitably time-consuming nature of the process. There was also awareness that challenges for students included suggestibility; dependency and the attraction of the safe option; patchy presence of the skills of self-knowledge, negotiation and prediction. These dangers for staff and students were addressed in a variety of ways including students having more allocated time with personal tutors to discuss personal goals, the accrediting of the action planning process through OCR on National Skills Profile and Learning Skills modules, and for PMLD students the more intensive involvement of families and staff in the actual setting and recording of goals.

With regard to the School Council there was a recognition that it was not effective in enabling current Harding House students to contribute to the running of either their class or the whole school. For some students the School Council was meaningful and important and for others not. The school’s response, at various stages of development and implementation includes the introduction of class councils dealing with everyday issues such as choosing break time drinks, playground games, seating arrangements, and celebrating achievements of class members, both at home and in school. Also planned are ‘department councils’ dealing with bigger issues such as fundraising activities for local and national charities, whole school assemblies and celebration, schools outings, and issues round school rules and discipline. The recording of School Council Meetings and their recommendations in an accessible format is also taken seriously and adequate time given to review and discuss issues.

The approach to Annual Reviews is equally impressive. Moving from a situation which was strong in a number of areas there were, nonetheless some gaps and a need to develop an even greater degree of engagement and agency. Thus, students were not originally involved in the running of their own review meetings and were not invited or empowered to make decisions about location, who to invite, refreshments, seating plan and so on. The norm now is that they are involved in every stage of the planning for the review and

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are active participants in it. Students have an initial meeting in the office with an administrator and their Personal Tutor to discuss who should be invited to the meeting and why. Having been shown exemplars, students designed their own invitations, produced them in ICT, and sent them out.

Pre-review questionnaires have been further developed so that they are appropriate to all students and distributed prior to the meeting. Students review their IEP paperwork with their Personal tutor before the meeting and have a copy with symbols, photos or objects of reference as appropriate.

Above all, experience suggests every student is highly motivated and excited by presentation of their contribution to the Review via video and/or PowerPoint presentation on interactive whiteboards. Part of this excitement has to do with the freedom they are given to create their own presentations which embrace their lives and hopes as persons, not just their aspirations as skilled adults. Part also has to do with the vibrancy and support that comes from sharing and developing their work with their peers. The warmth and humour combine with a seriousness of purpose that is life-affirming and practically enabling.

After the meeting students receive a summary of review notes in a meaningful form and, in order to ensure they have the capacity and motivation to engage in an ingoing way with the kind of agency illustrated in these examples, students have ongoing, explicit teaching on relevant communication, negotiation and decision-making skills.

1.3 Deepening our understanding, developing our practice

There are a number of issues that currently strike us as important, through we hope very much that you will help us add to and/or rethink these suggestions in the light of your own experience and the dialogue at the 12th June conference.

Q1.1 How can schools co-create with disadvantaged young people a range of ‘spaces where they can deal with themselves’?

Q1.2 How can we ensure those spaces do not become ghettoised?Q1.3 How can we find out more about whether some safe spaces unwittingly

foster dependency and others are more able to bridge to other groups and wider ‘public’ spaces, cultures and practices in schools?

Q1.4 What does this kind of ‘bridging’ look like and feel like?Q1.5 What does it require of those on both sides of the ‘divide’?Q1.6 How do we help dominant assumptions, cultures, and practices within

schools to be more open to alternative perspectives and understandings?

Q1.7 How might we create circumstances, occasions and ongoing practices that help individuals and groups to re-see each other?

Q1.8 How might this apply within the student body, between students and staff, and between students, staff and community?

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2 Reversing rolesstudents as agents of adult professional learning

2.1 Current contexts, imaginative responses

There is a very remarkable range of work currently going on under the broad heading of student or pupil voice. Thus, we have

activities that suggest young people benefit, both socially and academically, from listening to each other’s voices whether individually, e.g. buddying, coaching, mentoring and peer teaching, or more collectively, e.g. prefects, pupil leaders and class and schools councils

activities in which pupils are given responsibility for working alongside teachers e.g. pupil-led learning walks, pupils as co-researchers and lead researchers, pupil ambassadors, and lead learners

activities in which pupils express their views on a range of matters, sometimes after collecting and interpreting data, either on individual members of staff, schools teams or departments, or the school as a learning community e.g. pupils as observers, pupils as informants in teacher consultation about effective teaching and learning, pupils on staff appointment panels, pupils as governors, Junior Leadership Teams, pupil focus groups and surveys, and pupils as key informants in the processes of external inspection and accountability.

From this impressive range of activity there are two areas of development we would like to pursue in our Esmée Fairbairn work. These have, firstly, to do with how we co-create practices that enable young people to develop the dispositions and capacities to present their insights in spaces traditionally shaped and controlled by adults. The second, companion, area has to do with how adults develop their dispositions and capacities to be open to learning from young people within the context of formal schooling. Both challenges are substantial and, despite the proliferation of examples alluded to earlier, there is much we still have to learn if we wish to develop approaches to education animated by the values and aspirations of participatory democracy, not just the current imperatives of performance.

In developing our understanding of the first of the above development areas - i.e. how we co-create practices that enable young people to develop the dispositions and capacities to present their insights in spaces traditionally shaped and controlled by adults - we explore two examples of Students as learning partners.

The first draws on the work Elizabeth Draper at Haywards Heath Sixth Form College in West Sussex. Student-led INSET describes and reflects on a remarkable occasion in what turned out to be a catalytic event in the development of student voice when a group of student researchers designed and led a successful, but challenging, staff INSET session on successful teaching and learning.

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The second is taken from the work of Ceddy de la Croix, students and colleagues at Sandringham School, St Albans, Hertfordshire and focuses on their Year 7 Leading the Plenary Project. This, too, is remarkable, not only because young people were involved in an ambitious form of peer teaching, but also because they turned out to be key agents of professional change.

The second development area – i.e. how adults develop their dispositions and capacities to be open to learning from young people within the context of formal schooling - is explored through two examples of Student-led parents’ evenings. Parents’ evenings are traditionally constructed as primarily an adult event, despite the fact that its focus is quintessentially the work of young people themselves. Here, as we know, the work of a student over a substantial period of time and across a range of subject and other domains is the focus of both retrospective and prospective reflection. Even though, with the advent of target-setting and the involvement of pupils in a number of ways in reflecting in an ongoing way on their own progress, their actual attendance at such events generally ranges from the benignly peripheral to the mildly punitive.

There has, however, been a small but significant tradition in the USA of moving towards a process in which not just the voices but the actions of young people go beyond the remit of responsiveness and acquiescence to something much more pro-active and student led. In recent years there have been some very interesting examples of similar developments emerging in both primary and secondary schools in England.

In Y5 & 6 Learning Review Meetings we explore Alison Peacock’s work at the Wroxham School, a primary school in Potters Bar, Hertfordshire and in Student-Led Review we engage with the work of Ken Cornforth, Andy Williams, students and colleagues at Pudsey Grangefield School, in Leeds.

2.2 Boundary practices: opening up new territory

2.2 (a) Students as learning partners

Student-led INSET

One of the catalytic growth points in Elizabeth Draper’s student voice work at Hayward’s Heath Sixth Form College was the 2002 Student-led INSET for all college teaching staff. Student voice work at the college emerged from her desire to involve young people in the development of equal opportunities work for which she had a college responsibility. Making significant use of a students-as-researchers approach, early work produced some important student perspectives on what helped them to engage in teaching and learning. As with any initiative of this kind, some of the key questions that arose had to do with how findings might best be shared and explored with staff with a view to developing a respectful dialogue. The chosen approach

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was the development of a student-led INSET, designed and run by students with Elizabeth’s support and guidance.

Once the group had arrived at a secure view of the meaning and potential of their findings they set about designing the INSET and developing appropriate resources including flyers headed ‘The Dream Teacher’ that listed ideal qualities identified by students. Mindful of the sensitivities involved and of the desire to produce a positive outcome, the structures and animating processes of the session were dialogic, seeking, wherever possible, opportunities for students and staff to identify and articulate their own values and perspectives and listen attentively to the range of standpoints that would inevitably emerge. Teachers were put in groups by the students and asked to respond to questions about what students and then what staff bring to the teaching and learning process. Students then shared their research findings in role play scenarios and more conventional presentations that explained the Student Voice project’s work and intentions. Further group work focussing on issues to do with tutorials, teaching and learning, and college structures then led to a plenary discussion which brought the session to a close.

Reflecting on the INSET Elizabeth emphasises the importance of creating opportunities, spaces and places in which all can contribute to the teaching and learning process: it is, as she says, ‘not a one-way process and it is this process that matters as much as, if not more than, the “end” product’. However, with processes as unusual and exploratory as this, there are inevitable tensions and difficulties that accompany the positive learning that undoubtedly emerged.

These are, in some cases, different for staff and for students. But there are also issues that, whilst they have different articulations, nonetheless have a common grammar of power and pre-occupation.

Firstly, there is the invasiveness of external constraints, usually emanating from the requirements of exam performance, managerial / parental expectation, and a dominantly instrumental system of schooling. Thus, starting and sustaining student voice work of this kind is demanding of time for students and it is often difficult to sustain peer involvement within the wider institution. One member of staff partly echoed this when in their evaluation response they wrote

From where can we find realistic amounts of time for student dialogue? As subject staff, not as pastoral tutor? In the planned timetable? Without restructuring further the breadth and depth of our teaching? We used to be able to do this and much regret that we currently cannot.

The fact that another colleague wrote, ‘I learned a lot … and feel that I can take back what they said to improve my own teaching approaches. This was the most challenging INSET I have ever attended’ is reassuring. Nonetheless, the wider point still holds.

Secondly, acknowledging and positively addressing differential power dynamics is significantly demanding for both students and staff. The nature of

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the challenges include deeply held societal presumptions about (a) the differential status and capacities of adults and young people and (b) the equally resonant divide between professionally trained teachers and adolescents. Not altogether surprisingly, both Elizabeth and her students remark on ‘some difficult moments, particularly in the plenary. Power dynamics were challenged … Students were formally the controllers of this event.’ Whilst she felt it ‘was really quite mind-blowing actually and it generated a blast of vitality and democracy’ some of her colleagues saw it quite differently.

Despite these inevitable and proper difficulties it was also clear that, amongst both students and staff, there was a substantial source of goodwill, excitement, and desire for the process to continue in some form or other. Once awareness of the inevitable and potentially creative interdependence of any learning encounter had been publicly shown, individually and collectively felt, and allowed time to personally connect with the passions and principles that play such an important role in the work of teachers and the engagement of students, it re-energised commitment and renewed hope. Students commented on their increased understanding of and respect for the work of teachers: teachers remarked on their greater openness to the potential of young people as partners in learning. And through all this ran the thread of increased understanding and the potential for more creative and productive ways of working. In the words of one student involved, not just in the INSET, but also in the Student Voice work of the college over two years,

I became sensitive to the way in which our findings were making the student / teacher dichotomy more and more stimulatingly complex. It was no longer a case of the teacher teaching the student and the student absorbing information. (It was) more about what the two separate bodies had to offer one another. If I have learnt anything, it’s that teachers and students bring two very different, but equally valuable, sets of experiences to the classroom and college environment and when each is aware of the other both can benefit hugely.

Year 7 Leading the Plenary Project

Central to Sandringham’s approach to Deep Learning is the Year 7 Leading the Plenary Project in which twelve Y7 volunteers (two from each tutor group initially recommended by their tutor) are trained in leading three different types of plenary session at the end of lessons. The confidence and expertise of students is supported firstly, through the two hour training sessions developed and run by Ceddy de la Croix, a deputy headteacher at the school; secondly, through the cumulative experience of running the plenary sessions in class; thirdly through the engagement of all students in the plenaries; and, fourthly, through the eventual involvement of all pupils taking turns as plenary leaders themselves. Within a fortnight each student completes ten plenaries which are recorded in their training books, thereby receiving a Headteacher Commendation. After each plenary they receive brief feedback from the member of staff. Once they have completed the ten plenaries they become a

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coach for another student plenary leader in the class to whom they give appropriate feedback and support.

There are six points to underscore from a student standpoint

Firstly, the training is imaginative, good fun, practical and appropriately attentive to relational and professional sensitivities

Secondly, actual experience of running the plenaries is supported by staff themselves (through agreeing to their taking place and through feedback to the student afterwards), by the deputy head running the programme, and, crucially, by all fellow students who not only engage in the plenary activities, but subsequently become plenary leaders themselves.

Thirdly, it is inclusive i.e. one that through its actual implementation in the classroom and through peer coaching of new plenary leaders, involves all members of the class

Fourthly, the students’ efforts connect to the school’s rewards system Fifth, their work also draws on intrinsic motivational factors to do with

individual satisfaction of running plenaries well and enhancing their own learning skills and dispositions. Indeed, some students adapt the plenaries to create ones more suited to their interests and needs and those of their peers.

Sixth, it seems likely that their involvement in an undertaking which seeks to develop creative approaches to learning also has a collective appeal, a sense, not just that they are developing personal learning skills, but also contributing to something that is worthwhile for their peers and for the school as a learning community.

From a staff standpoint there are seven points that seem to be important in helping them to develop a greater capacity to be open to professional learning triggered by the active leadership of young people themselves.

Firstly, the programme is voluntary Secondly, and I would suggest crucially, they respect and trust the deputy

headteacher running the programme and * his ingoing informal engagement with staff and students and * his use of formal occasions, e.g. morning briefings and staff CPD sessions, to encourage and persuade – visually and experientially through video-clips and student and staff testimony Thirdly, they know that the training students receive is worthwhile and in

the peer-led phase of the work where, on rare occasions training has been less successful, issues can be picked up and addressed.

Fourthly, teachers are actively involved in helping students reflect on the success or otherwise of the plenaries

Fifth, in many instances it gives teachers a breather at the end of lessons Sixth, it more often than not helps staff develop their unassisted

approaches to plenaries. Indeed, on a number of occasions students have been, in Ceddy de la Croix’s words ‘active carriers of good practice as they take plenary ideas they have used in a lesson and transfer it to another’

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Lastly, evidence suggests this kind of student involvement helps to positively develop the relationships and trust between students and staff.

2.2 (b) Student-led parents’ evenings

Y5 & 6 Learning Review Meetings

Alison Peacock’s pioneering work is at the forefront of radical progressive education in this country, particularly with regard to matters of pupil engagement, her steadfast refusal to label children by ‘ability’, and her longstanding commitment to developing the school as a democratic community. Of special relevance to this document is her insistence on placing pupil agency at the heart of their learning, including their termly Review of Progress.

Years 5 & 6 Learning Review Meetings take place once a term during the school day. They last for twenty minutes and are attended by the child, parent(s), the teacher, the TA and the headteacher. Prior to the meeting the child fills in a questionnaire about their perceived successes, worries and support needs. Crucially, not only does the child decide the focus of the Review Meeting, she also leads the meeting itselfThe headteacher then writes a summary of the child’s view and this goes back to the teacher and teaching assistant as a basis for action and subsequent review.

The process is immensely helpful for parents, as well as for pupils, but it is the insistence on requiring and supporting the child in taking control of the self-review process that gives it its special significance. In Alison’s words, ‘It is about self-assessing, about articulating the process, having a discussion and about making decisions’ and about how the child’s control of the substance and direction of the process leads to a remarkable quality of engagement and occasionally to very substantial change. Alison again:

The occasion when Rob (11 years), previously noted for his aggression on the playground, announced in a Review Meeting that his favourite work was “writing poetry” was a milestone. We knew then that the learning environment we were seeking to create was beginning to taking shape.

What is especially interesting about this kind of commitment with children in Years 5 and 6 is the bridge from consultation to participation and the development of a widely shared, bindingly understood seriousness of purpose that develops and celebrates, not just their capacity and their desire to make serious choices, but also a genuinely shared responsibility that includes but also goes beyond aspirant outcomes. This is also about the felt realities of wider learning processes, of their development as persons, as young human beings who have a special significance as members of the caring and creative learning community of the school to which they belong.

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There are, of course, important tensions and issues here that we would wish to explore in our Esmée Fairbairn work. How, for example, how does one enable and nurture the capacity and the desire of young pupils to develop this kind of agency without being unduly intimidated or influenced by peers or by adults, many of whom would regard such processes with a degree of incredulity or mistrust? How does one develop in adults a companion set of capacities and dispositions that retain adult responsibility whilst at the same time reworking them in ways that accommodate a more adventurous understanding of the powers and capacities of young people?

A small but significant part of the answer to both questions has to do with the sheer multiplicity of occasions and opportunities children at Wroxham School have, firstly, to make choices about the nature and direction of their work. Secondly, and equally importantly, the principled commitment not to label children, not to foreclose possibility presumptuously or prematurely is likely to have a benign, wide-ranging influence in the kinds of direction the school is seeking to travel.

Student-Led Review

The Student-Led Review approach at Pudsey Grangefield School in Leeds is firmly rooted in the school’s commitment to personalising learning and has been jointly developed by the Principal, Ken Cornforth, and Andy Williams, a Learning Coach Professional and Co-director of Learning Environments at the school. Prior arrangements, much like any other secondary school in England, were seen as less helpful for all involved than they might otherwise have been. The customary model involved ‘long and lonely preparation’ by members of staff whose responsibility it was to drive and host the meeting. As with traditional approaches to parents’ evenings up and down the country, staff expectations of student commitment to its core purpose was lower than they might have been and students themselves tended to feel less engaged, less responsible and less prepared than the situation warranted.

The student-led model developed at the school goes hand in hand with the emergence of new pastoral arrangements in which tutorial sessions involving 25+ mixed ability students are changed from four 15 minute daily periods with an hour’s ‘student development day’ on a Friday to 30 minute sessions, three days a week, in groups of not more than 15 students with ‘similar abilities and goals’. Structural changes of this kind enable a cultural transformation with a move away from a lecturing approach to one that is (a) much more dialogic and interactive and (b) much better equipped to monitor student work against their agreed targets.

In order to prepare for the student-led review young people receive eight slots of training from an impressively wide range of staff coaches, all of whom have themselves had appropriate training. Student training includes engagement with substantial amounts of data, e.g. How I learn best (‘learning-to-learn’ skills) current grades or levels for each subject studied target grades position in the Year Group E/O/B [exceeding / on / below] level for each

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subject effort and behaviour grade homework and independent learning grade. Finally, on the basis of all this, the student is asked to identify three tentative objectives.

The Review itself includes the student, the parent / carer, and the Learning Coach. It is the student’s responsibility to set the scene, manage the process, and engage in a dialogue within which tentative objectives are challenged and firmed up. She is assisted in this by the presence of the Learning Coach who acts as a benign resource, providing appropriate challenge and the task of helping to elucidate the three objectives or learning goals to which all three parties to the Review are jointly committed.

After the Review the emphasis is on action plans with the Learning Coach facilitating and all participants taking a joint responsibility for evaluation.

At the time of writing we have not been able to have a dialogue with students or staff at Pudsey Grangefield School so it is difficult to form an accurate impression of the animating force behind this development. Nonetheless, within the context of our Esmée Fairbairn work a number of challenges and possibilities present themselves. Certainly, the school seems confident that the new approach is one which not only makes the review process more powerful and more meaningful to young people through appropriate training, structures and support. It also believes in the positive, energising dynamic of young people both celebrating their achievements and taking a shared responsibility for shaping their future.

2.3 Deepening our understanding, developing our practice

These are exciting developments that not only put the student close to the centre of the stage, they alter the position previously occupied by staff.

Two sets of questions suggest themselves. The first has to do with how young people re-imagine their role in school and how they develop a companion set of skills and dispositions to enable them to benefit and contribute in equal measure

Q2.1 What kinds of new structural arrangements are required to enable this kind of work to flourish?

Q2.2 What kinds of training do students need? How intense does it need to be? Who does it? How often? When? How does it address the need to re-see the roles of students and staff?

Q2.3 How do we develop a system that moves from elite / exotic status to one that is inclusive in its involvement and its appeal?

Q2.4 How do we accommodate the time demands and pressures of these new arrangements with existing requirements and imperatives, both internal and external?

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The second set of questions arise from the parallel reconfiguration of staff roles in these developments

Q2.5 How are new systems to address issues of credibility (good quality) and status (seen as worthwhile)?

Q2.6 How are deeply and widely held assumptions about differential capacities, experience and status between adults and young people effectively acknowledged and addressed?

Q2.7 How do we encourage adults to re-see and re-listen in these new kinds of encounter with young people?

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3 Co-constructing the common goodremaking public spaces in schools

where adults + young people can have an open dialogue

This final section of our paper is quite different from the other two that precede it, basically because it seeks answers to questions not often asked in our education system, even though they lie only just beneath the surface of territory we have been exploring earlier. They are questions that go to the heart of our aspirations, not only to be a democratic society but also, through our systems of schooling and education, to become more fully so. They have to do with how adults and young people develop shared understandings, dispositions and public practices that exemplify democracy as a shared form of life.

If schools are to exemplify practices and create traditions that enable young people and adults to live and learn together in ways which go beyond the local engagements of classroom and playground, how do they develop formal and informal arrangements, appropriate

cultures and personal capacities that come to life in shared spaces that transcend hierarchy and value difference?

In furtherance of these aspirations, how do schools create and nurture spaces where young people have the

confidence, capability and desire to explore matters that express their own particular identities and aspirations, not only within the safety of their own small groups and micro contexts, but also in the wider, diverse commonalities of the school to which they belong?

Likewise, and, not withstanding their high profile in this paper, more often than not unrecognised or undervalued, how do schools help adults develop the skills and dispositions to listen to

students in ways which are neither condescending towards the young nor a self-inflicted eradication of their own adult experiences and perspectives?

In sum,

how does a community committed to the furtherance of a democratic society collectively make meaning of the value, variety and adventure of its daily work in and over time and give due weight and significance to the quality and direction to its shared life?

There is exciting, emerging work, such as that of Morwenna Griffiths and her colleagues at Edinburgh University and teachers and schools in Nottingham with whom she worked within the Creative Partnerships scheme that begins to address issues of how young people can be encouraged to ‘be’ in public

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spaces, how they can learn to develop the dispositions and skills that are so central to democracy as a public way of life. However, there are very few examples of other work animated by the same concerns and it is to the radical traditions of state education that we need to turn to begin to understand why these aspirations are important and how they might variously be interpreted and fulfilled.

We look, first at the role of young people in The Moot at Countesthorpe Community College in Leicestershire between its inception in 1970 and its demise in 1985 when that communal, democratic form of governance was disbanded. We then touch, briefly, on my own work at Stantonbury Campus in Milton Keynes in the mid to late 1980s when we involved Students in Hall Meetings before looking at and on our recent our evaluation work at Bishops Park College, Clacton where student involvement in the Research Forum was central to the evaluation strategy. Finally, we describe at greater length a remarkably ambitious and hugely successful example of radical secondary education. It concerns the work of Alex Bloom at St George-in-the East Secondary School, Stepney, London where his development of the Whole School Meeting brought together one of the most imaginative and most sophisticated unions of democratic learning and democratic governance this country has ever seen.

3.1 The Mootat Countesthorpe Community College, Leicestershire

From 1970 to 1985, despite the fact that it had a headteacher, all key decisions of policy and practice, including the appointment and payment of staff, were taken by the Moot. This was a communal gathering open to all in the school, including non-teaching staff and students. All attending had one vote each and anyone was entitled to call a Moot.

The rationale for these arrangements was rooted in the view of learning developed at the College in the first phase of its development and it is worth reproducing it in part here

Our system of internal government, in which every member of staff and the student body has a part that can be taken, derives from the system of learning. The more a student takes responsibility for studying, the more a student will need a voice in determining the conditions of study; the more teachers are expected to coordinate their implementation of curriculum, the more they will need to determine the organization of the available resources and distribution of responsibilities.

The Moot set up various committees and the Standing Committee which met every fortnight and was responsible for decision making not involving changes in policy. Membership of staff was by rota and all staff were on the Standing Committee during the course of an academic year. Membership was open to students and two from each ‘team’ (the mini-schools that emerged as the key communities of learning in the College) could be registered as having voting

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rights, with anyone being entitled to attend meetings. However, in general, student participation in the Moot and Standing Committee was minimal and often confined to a small number of sixth form students and, for many teachers, the informal structures and very significant way in which students were involved on a day-to-day basis about their learning was what really mattered.

3.2 Students in Hall Meetingsat Stantonbury Campus, Milton Keynes

Some of the reasons for minimal student involvement in the participatory structures at Countesthorpe, e.g. lack of appropriate information, the confusing and mystifying formal procedures, dominant and complex language and behaviour by some staff, and the tendency for the decision making process to be protracted or ineffective, led myself and a number of colleagues at Stantonbury Campus, Milton Keynes, to develop a more limited, exploratory model of involving students in Hall Meetings.

This development took place in Portway Hall, one of the five Halls or mini-schools of about 550 students and 30+ staff that made up Stantonbury Campus in the mid 1980s. Each Student Council form representative was paired up with a member of staff, usually their tutor, whose responsibility it was to meet beforehand, elicit issues the student felt important or which she wished to raise at the meeting, explain agenda items, and make her aware of some of the pertinent background issues. During the meeting paired student and staff would sit together and after the meeting they would again meet to talk things through

3.3 The Research Forumat Bishops Park College, Clacton

A contemporary development in the spirit of the radical traditions of Countesthorpe and Stantonbury Campus was the emergence of a Research Forum that formed a key part of the major evaluation (Less is More? The

Development of a Schools-within-Schools Approach to Education on a

Human Scale at Bishops Park College, Clacton, Essex) of the initial phase of the development of Bishops Park College, the first purpose built school-within-a-school in England. Members of the Research Forum included parents, governors, teachers, senior leadership members and four students (two Y7 boys and two Y10 girls). The key purposes of the Forum were, firstly, to provide guidance for the evaluation team about the direction and validly of their work and, secondly, to be key informants and, in the case of the students, co-researchers. Thirdly, and equally importantly, at the request of the college, the evalution team were tasked with developing a framework of accountability more suited than OfSTED to the innovative aspirations of the school, and the Research Forum played a pivotal role in that undertaking.

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What is particularly pertinent here is the way in which the culture of mutual learning and exchange that developed in the Forum profoundly changed the way in which all participants understood each other. This was not an easy process and it required skill, patience, the reaffirmation of inclusive, democratic values, and, above all, generosity of spirit and time.

3.4 Whole School Meetingat St George-in-the East Secondary School, Stepney, London

The last example we offer in this section of the paper is longer than those we have considered thus far, partly because it is so compelling and, partly, because, in the absence of contemporary models, a rich description of highly innovative practice can inspire us and give us a feel for the authenticity of what is being advocated.

The work of Alex Bloom between 1945 and 1955 at St George-in-the-East Secondary School in Cable Street, Stepney, in the East End of London not only provides one of the most compelling examples of a radical state secondary school we have ever had in England. It also provides one of the few examples of intended, public, intergenerational learning at the heart of a school’s attempt to create a democratic learning community.

On 1st October 1945, Bloom set out to build what he described in his own words as ‘A consciously democratic community … without regimentation, without corporal punishment, without competition.’ The work of the school was guided by an orienting set of perspectives that became known as ‘Our Pattern’. Fundamentally, this was about the eradication of fear and the creation of a context for human flourishing that valued the contribution of each person and worked hard to develop a creative and responsive school community worthy of the loyalty and commitment of all its students.

‘Our Pattern’

Staff working together to develop common understandings of guiding principles about human flourishing within the context of education and formal schooling

1. the child must feel that … he does count, that he is wanted, that he has a contribution to make to the common good

2. the child must feel the school community is worthwhile

Eradicate the influence of fear -‘fear of authority, fear of failure, fear of punishment’

Replace fear with ‘Friendship, security and the recognition of each child’s worth’

No competition emulation / ipsative striving No marks / prizes intrinsic motivation + communal

recognition No streaming / setting all ability, sometimes mixed-age grouping No punishment restorative, communal response

DEMOCRATIC VALUES + RELATIONSHIPS (1)St George-in-the-East Secondary School, London (1953)

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The curricular and interpersonal opportunities the school offered emphasised the importance of an approach to learning called the School Study in which the majority of the formal curriculum was co-constructed within the context of thematic work culminating in a School Conference in which work was celebrated and reviewed in both mixed age and in form groups. The remainder of the curriculum was negotiated through mixed age Electives in which ‘children make up their own timetable’. There was thus substantial emphasis, both on continuity of relationships with a class teacher and on multi-facetted communal engagement with other students and staff. In addition there was strong commitment to learning outside the physical confines of the school, including regular residential experience in the form of school camps on the south coast of England. Lastly, students’ own evaluations of their curricular experience in both its broad and narrow senses was sought and acted on through Weekly Reviews in which each student commented on any aspect of learning and teaching they felt appropriate.

Learn from each other (students + staff) Relationships with class teacher Form meetings Weekly reviews School study (agreed theme) e.g Man’s Dependence on Man

Thematic day conference where work is shared (Whole) School council

Partnership between teachers and students

Negotiate what you learn Learning in the community Electives (choose what to study after taster session) Art Book-binding Creative writing Debates Drama Dramatic reading Fabric printing French Housecraft Italic writing Literature Music Mythology Needlecraft Poetry Puppetry Recorder playing Weaving What’s on? Woodwork

Student initiated Extra Maths Extra EnglishNon-groups group absorb into existing group include in new activity

Residential camps

DEMOCRATIC VALUES + RELATIONSHIPS (2)St George-in-the-East Secondary School, London (1953)

The formal democratic organisation of the school was, in many ways, equally remarkable. There were three core channels of its work through the Staff Panel, the Pupil Panel, and, at school level, the Joint Panel and the School Council /School Meeting. The Staff Panel met every Monday lunchtime and included all staff i.e. about 10 people. The Pupil Panel was comprised of the Head Boy and Head Girl, their two Deputies and the Secretary, all of whom were elected by students. It also included elected Form Reps. The panel met every Friday morning in school time and considered all school matters. There were reports from Form Reps and business sent by staff. It also appointed a range of Pupil Committees which took responsibility for running various aspects of school life e.g.

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dance - midday dancing in the Hall meals – organising break-time canteen and helping with midday meals sports – playground games, sports equipment, outside matches (Non

competitive! They did play matches with other schools but, even when they ‘won’ always requested they be recorded ‘friendlies’ and not count in the league)

tidy – appearance of the school social – concerts, parties, visitorsEach Committee was also linked to a member of staff who undertook a liaison role. Form Meetings took place every Monday morning, in part to hear reports of the previous Friday’s Pupil Panel meeting.

The Joint Panel met on the last Friday of the month. It was comprised of members of both Staff and Pupil Panels and chairs of all Pupil Committees. Reports were given by a member of staff for the Staff Panel, by the Head Girl or Head Boy for the Pupil Panel, and by chairs of the various Pupil Committees. On the Monday following the Joint Panel Meeting there was a School Council / School Meeting presided over alternately by a member of staff and by a member of the Pupil Panel agreed at the previous Full School Meeting.

Joint PanelStaff Panel MemberHead Boy / GirlChairs of Pupil Committees Headteacher

Pupil PanelHead Boy / GirlDeputy HB/G Form RepsSecretary Headteacher

Staff Panel All staff (about 10)

SchoolStudentsStaff

DEMOCRATIC STRUCTURESSt George-in-the-East Secondary School, Stepney, London (1953)

Staff PanelMonday lunchtime

Form Meeting Pupil CommitteesMonday Morning Ongoing

dance meals sport tidy social

Pupil PanelFriday Morning

Weekly Meeting Schedule

Pupil Panel Staff Panel▼ ▼

Joint PanelLast Friday of the month

▼(Whole) School Council [whole school: students + staff]

Monday following Joint Panel Meeting

Monthly Meeting Schedule

It is not always clear, either from Bloom’s own writing or from accounts of the school by others, whether use of the term ‘School Council’ referred to the trivalent panel structure, or to the Joint Panel of teachers and students, or to the gathering of the whole school as a democratic community in the School Meeting. However, the broad point Bloom is making is that the structures of democratic engagement promote intergenerational learning through lived, communal responsibility and it is this which is particularly pertinent to this

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strand of our Esmée Fairbairn work. Here we have a very useful account of how young people and adults can come together as a community to reflect on, celebrate and challenge the work they have jointly undertaken. It takes seriously the importance within a democratic society of creating a public space within which members of the community (in this case a small secondary modern school of about 200 students and 10 staff) can make meaning of their work and their lives together in ways which are rigorous and respectful, challenging and caring, and utterly committed to a way of being that sees individuality and community as both the condition and purpose of living our lives well together.

One particularly interesting variant on the different forms the School Council / School Meeting took in its ten year development under Bloom’s guidance was the one described by E.R.Braithwaite, the Guyanan author whose internationally famous book, To Sir With Love, was based on his brief experience at the school in the early 1950s. Chapter 17 of the book opens with an air of excitement: ‘The half yearly report of the Students’ Council … was one of the most important days in the calendar of (the) school’ and Braithwaite admits to ‘being as excited as the children as the day approached.’ The proceedings begin with Bloom speaking ‘at length, re-iterating the aims and policy of the school and of the important contribution each child could make to the furtherance of those aims.’ After leaving the stage ‘to tremendous applause’ Bloom is then followed by the Head Girl explaining the purpose of the Council and its activities prior to each class, through its chosen reps for each subject, reporting on their half-year’s work with ‘the emphasis … on what they understood rather than what they were expected to learn.’ Not only was the emphasis on what had been learned, it was also on students’ own perspectives and judgment on the value of their experiences.

What then transpires is a truly remarkable process in which students move into a reciprocally demanding, sometimes critical, dialogue with three randomly chosen members of staff who, with varying degrees of skill and conviction, seek to justify and, in some case defend, the basis of the school curriculum on which the student body had communally reflected in such detail. In this instance, one of the older boys challenged the nature of PE that the school offered:

‘He complained that the PT was ill-conceived and pointless, and the routine monotonous; he could see no advantage in doing it; a jolly good game was far better. Apparently, he was voicing the opinion of all the boys, for they cheered him loudly.’

There then follows a series of impassioned, thought-provoking exchanges between students and staff about the nature and possible justification of compulsion, the necessity of recognising differences in need and capacity, the importance of thinking about and helping others, and the relationship between school and wider society, particularly with regard to preparation for adult life.

If we combine the spirit of this account with Bloom’s own writing on School Meetings we begin to get a feel for the vibrancy of democratic engagement at

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St. George-in-the-East and the potential similar approaches have for further development at the beginning of the 21st century.

3.5 Deepening our understanding, developing our practice

Drawing on the successes and failures of the radical traditions of state education we close by offering seven questions that begin to open up some of the key issues that have emerged in the last half century.

Q3.1 How can we help all young people, not just the articulate or the confident, to learn how to ‘be’ in public spaces?

Q3.2 How do we develop and value informal spaces for intergenerational dialogue within schools?

Q3.3 How do we develop formal spaces for intergenerational dialogue?Q3.4 How do we prepare young people and adults to learn how to use and

develop them?Q3.5 What lessons can we learn from past examples that will support us in

future work?Q3.6 What is the connection between successful use of formal

intergenerational spaces and opportunities within the curriculum for student choice and co-construction?

Q3.7 What is the role of close relationships and feelings of significance in developing the confidence and desire to challenge and celebrate each other’s practice in a public space?

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Appendix 1

GETTING CLEAR ABOUT PUPIL CONSULTATION5 key questions to ask of our practices and aspirations

Purposes and valuesKey question:

‘Why are we doing this?’

Why is this work being encouraged / resisted? In whose interests? Who benefits and why?

Power and controlKey question:

‘Whose voices are heard mostly clearly?’

Who is allowed to speak? About what? Who gets heard? By whom? Who is listening? Why?

Capacities and dispositionsKey question:

‘What skills and attitudes do we need to develop to make this work?’

How are the appropriate skills developed? How do people regard / care for each other? Are they taking it seriously? Do some people feel threatened?

Systems and structuresKey question:

‘How will the school support people committed to pupil voice?’

Do we have appropriate systems and structures that support people interested?

Are there public / communal, as well as smaller, more intimate spaces to make meaning of recommendations and decide what should be done?

Actions and responsibilitiesKey question:

‘Does anything actually change?’

What actually happens? Who decides? Who has responsibility for embedding the change? How do we hold ourselves / each other to account? How is the change monitored and evaluated? By whom?

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