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School councils: Shut up, we're listening

The past decade has seen an explosion in the number of school councils. But now it seems
many schools just pay lip service to the idea, which can do more harm than good, says Tom
Bennett
Supporters of student representation in schools should be pleased. While the Department
for Education doesn't formally keep track of school council numbers, data suggests that at least
90% of schools now use them and more institutions are still signing up.

Student councils – where children are elected to formally represent their peers in school
affairs – are a recent phenomenon. Most of them were created since 2000. The 2003 Every Child
Matters (ECM) initiative of the last government acted as an enormous spur to many schools, which
had to show that they were aiming at five goals – goal number three was that children had to
"make a positive contribution" to the life of the school. For most UK schools, that means a student
council.

Under the coalition government, the official line doesn't mention student councils, but
endorses them as a potential strategy. A DfE spokesperson says: "We want schools to consider the
views of pupils on matters that affect them. Schools should determine for themselves the most
effective way to do this."

Maggie Atkinson, the children's commissioner for England, says: "A school council is a
formal method of taking young people's views into account ... This is not about putting children in
charge. Rather, it is about listening to their concerns and using their experience as the main users
of school services to make improvements."

And yet, in research for Atkinson's office by the National Foundation for Educational
Research, just two-fifths of children thought school councils were an effective way of listening to
their ideas, and a quarter did not.

Research produced in 2010 by the University of Edinburgh found that, while school councils
were popular and common, there were problems with their design, execution and support that
could undermine the whole point of the project. In Having a Say at School, researchers found that
most councils had small or no budgets; only half of all members received any formal training to
perform their roles; and actually being heard outside the council chamber was a significant
obstacle.

"Regular and effective communication is cited as a common weakness between pupil

councillors and their fellow students," researchers say.

Some students I spoke to agree. "Our school made a big fuss about it at the start of the
year," says Caroline, a year 11 student in London, "but when they even bother to get us into a
council meeting, no matter what we say, nothing happens. It's just a bit pointless." Does it make
you want to get involved in local democracy later on in life? "No, not if it's like that."

Some teachers also view councils with cynicism. "School council elections are the worst face
of democracy," says one teacher in Newcastle. "It's just a popularity contest, and the quiet,
sensible ones get sidelined."

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"I know it's important to listen to the students," says Arthur, head of English in a London
school, "but there need to be clear lines where we acknowledge that adults are ultimately in
charge. I sometimes wish that teachers in my school enjoyed as good representation as the school
council."

The key is getting the balance right, says one school governor in Norwich. "Too many
schools tick the boxes so they look like they're doing something for Ofsted, but the reality is
merely lip-service. It teaches them learned helplessness. If they're given a chance to participate,
but then that participation is hollow, it's corrosive – you dislocate kids from the idea that they can
make a difference in their own lives."

Jane, a governor of a primary in Reading, agrees. "There's a very fine line to tread," she says.
"On the one hand, councils have to be managed to some extent, or chaos ensues. On the other,
there's no point in banging on about how it teaches the kids about democracy if the entire thing is
stage-managed from start to finish, with kids being nominated but then being 'deselected' by the
staff 'informally'."

Russell King, lead teacher in charge of student voice at Passmores academy, (featured
recently in Channel 4's documentary Educating Essex) agrees these are pitfalls to avoid. "You need
to actively give them business on which to have an influence," he says. His school has recently
decanted into a brand new building. He shows me an entire catalogue of student ideas for the
school redesign; ideas that were not merely pinned to a wall and forgotten, but absorbed into the
design process, most notably the bathrooms, which are unisex, open-plan and have cubicles in
house colours.

He also has a novel approach to elections: anonymous hustings. Instead of the normal
beauty parade/friendship contest, he got all the candidates for the year councils to write down
their views on paper, which were then distributed to their respective electorates, in an attempt to
separate the personality from the politics. Couldn't the children just let slip who wrote what? "Of
course," says King, "but it reduces the personal element. And any pupil committed enough to do
that on a large scale is probably showing ingenuity and intelligence anyway. You can't escape it
entirely."

And how does a council meeting avoid degenerating into a pie-fight about trivia, or bitching
about teachers? "There has to be a facilitator present; someone who provides structure to the
discussion, who can call a halt to slagging off teachers, but who is there to genuinely listen, take
minutes, and report back. Also, the agenda of the meeting needs to involve other stakeholders in
the school; so we set certain points they have to discuss, and after that they are free to discuss any
points they want. The member of staff needs to capture the discussion appropriately, not just
close down discussion."

So why are councils necessary? "It's important that people have a say in the way their lives
are run – these individuals are policymakers in training. Treat a child like an adult, they act like an
adult. We don't believe that top-down decision-making needs to happen at all levels."

While some schools support the use of student councils as laboratories of democracy,
others still regard them as unwelcome guests at the table of power. Perhaps, with an eye to
coalition politics, this isn't such an inappropriate metaphor.

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UK riots report says teachers should be able to specialise in problem pupils

Government's adviser on behaviour Charlie Taylor calls for teachers to be trained in pupil
referral units
New teachers will be invited to become specialists in managing disruptive behaviour
following a review commissioned by the government in the wake of last summer's riots.

From September, new recruits to the profession will be able to do part of their teacher
training in pupil referral units, where children excluded from mainstream education are taught.

The recommendation is contained in a report by the government's adviser on behaviour,

Charlie Taylor, who said such training would be a "fantastic grounding" for any teacher.

Two-thirds of the young people brought before the courts after last summer's riots had
some form of special educational need and more than one in 10 had been permanently excluded
from school.

Taylor said: "One of the things these children find difficult to deal with, and it's ironic
because they have chaotic lives, is any sort of change. So less churn in the staff of pupil referral
units, a bit more stability, is the key – specialists, and better trained specialists."

Teachers with this training could inject expertise into mainstream schools, Taylor said.
"Often it takes an expert to go in and say: 'You know what? The way you react to the child is
feeding their behaviour.'"

At present, pupil referral units are not allowed to run work-based teacher training, and
teachers cannot complete their qualified teacher status or spend their induction year as a newly
qualified teacher in one of the units.

Taylor said outstanding pupil referral units should be encouraged to convert to academy
status and operate independently from their local authority. He argued this would give them
greater freedom to develop a wider range of services.

He said children excluded from mainstream education had historically been neglected by
the school system. In 2010, just over 1% of pupils in "alternative provision" achieved five good
GCSE passes including English and maths, compared with over 53% in all schools in England.

Taylor said: "One of the things is that these children are incredibly irritating. They can make
us feel really angry, when you walk down the street and there are four of them blocking the
pavement. It can make us want to be punitive – bring back the birch. We don't always do what we
need to do for them. For many years they've been in the peripheral vision of the education world.

"Ultimately, if we don't address these children and help them, give them what they need,
they'll take it from us, on their terms."

The Department for Education is currently running a trial in which schools retain
responsibility for the education of pupils they exclude. Schools continue to receive funding for
these pupils and can use the money to develop bespoke programmes for individual children.

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The report was welcomed by the Association of School and College Leaders union, which
represents headteachers.

However, the union's general secretary, Brian Lightman, warned: "We have reservations
about encouraging large numbers of trainee teachers in alternative provision settings. There are
instances where it would make sense, but given the challenges these pupils bring, it seems that
putting young, inexperienced trainee teachers in that situation would not usually be in the best
interest of the teacher or the pupils."