Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Their intention was to discover what principles they had developed, largely
intuitively, between them. If such principles did exist, could they be reproduced
in a consistent form for use by others?
The method was to explore their varied experience of issues about school
leadership and the challenge of taking student voice and person-centred
education more seriously. The workshop was facilitated by John Bazalgette from
The Grubb Institute of Behavioural Studies and Michael Fielding from the
Institute of Education.
Resourcing
The research workshop was majorly funded by the Guerrand-Hermès Foundation
for Peace. Thanks are due to the Trustees for their generous support.
FINDINGS
Supporting factors
It emerged that there were 12 common positions from which these school
leaders personally worked and how they thought about what their students might
use their school for. In each case they were backed in this by their leadership
team. The key points are listed here with indicative comments (not verbatim)
made in the discussion about what they all had in common
• We have found again and again that some of the most potent
contributions have come from those seen formerly as ‘problem’ pupils.
Trusting them has released new insights and understanding for us all”
• They saw students as co-creators of the work of their school, rather than
passive consumers of what others provide. The effect of this was to push
the ‘envelope’ of the ‘pupil role’ into new dimensions.
• The students are the primary stakeholders of our school. Whatever the
efforts of the staff, what the school is and does in the end depends upon
the children’s efforts.
• I am clear from the outset that there are certain things that will not be
changed: these include the National Curriculum, finance and other
questions, which could include school uniform. There has never been
any problem about this – Defining boundaries clearly can guard against
token consultation, what passes for sounding student opinion but is
actually doing a ‘selling’ job.
• The focus is on the curriculum, but not just the subject content; our
students are interested in how pupils are treated – It is scary how much
they unearth; they are ruthlessly honest. We have to handle this with
integrity.
• I walk the school and am available to talk to anyone, but they will only talk
if they have confident that I am truly listening. - We have Associate
Governors, who the rest of the Governing Body find invaluable.
• They are working with evidence at all times and expected that of
others; this enabled everyone to test the validity of assumptions that lay
behind decisions.
• Consistently they recognised the need for external advice and support
in order to develop leverage which could bring about shifts in internal
understanding.
• It took me over two years before I could really get to grips with the issue.
The school just wasn’t ready before that – The governors had appointed
me to take further work my predecessor had begun.
Obstacles
All five heads encountered similar obstacles which they had to overcome. They
were all struggling with one or more of them even after several years of releasing
student potential through mobilising student voice. Nine obstacles were
identified in all.
• A head introducing this kind of work had to help others face fear of the
unknown.
A pattern emerges
Each of these heads seemed to share perspectives from which five principles
could be drawn:
• They saw that the way they personally engaged as heads with their
students set a defining standard by which everyone else could judge
their own engagements with one another.
• Significantly this included students, teachers and support staff, and also
extended to parents, governors and others beyond the school’s gates.
A working model
Reflecting on these principles an underlying dynamic could be outlined. From
them a practical organisational model was emerging, though not as yet
articulated. These were heads whose organisational thinking was based on
processes, which structured interactions ‘horizontally, not ‘vertically’.
Their core idea was that children are not simply ‘consumers’ of the activities of
the school, but in their role as ‘students’ they are the principal implementers of
the head’s and the school’s policy. Thus these schools were working on the
basis that children were learning to develop allegiance to what the school is for
which was possible because they were its co-creators. They were not simply
being conditioned to be obedient to those set in positions of authority.
© The Grubb Institute July 2009 5
Engaging Student Voice AX673
The process diagram below embeds this horizontal dynamic across these
schools. This model is based on three key questions which apply to
everyone in the school, though those in different roles may generally hold
greater responsibility for taking action in specific areas:
Manag
The model shows how leadership can emerge dynamically from every level of
the school. These headteachers as leaders were sensitive to how all three
questions interact with each other and that their leadership gained its liveliness
from being continuously alert to those interactions. They thought of their student
body largely but not exclusively as the school’s implementers, working
collaboratively with the teachers and tutors. In this way, the students are active
stakeholders in the effectiveness of their school. Teachers and tutors take on
management activities with the students in the classrooms and elsewhere which
influence the school’s effectiveness. These heads felt that for their own
effectiveness, they needed to understand the thoughts, feelings and other
evidence from the student population about what they were achieving in their
interfaces with staff in classrooms and elsewhere: so they needed the outer
arrows in both directions that linked Why? with How?
Heads also needed to know about the thoughts, feelings, experiences and
effectiveness of staff teams across the school, as well as what went on in the
various engagements with the student implementers in classrooms, laboratories,
gymnasia and playgrounds. This drew on evidence from staff team meetings as
the managers of the school’s policies, put into practice by the implementer/
students. So the interacting/interfacing cycles, through which working at the
questions Why? and What? were put into action, were important to heads.
Head teachers, engaging with all the stakeholders of the school have the
responsibility to discern the purpose of the school – why it exists – and to create
a design that most effectively achieves that purpose.
Further work could include testing it further with a wider population. It might be
that it could be developed as a way of preparing heads to work authentically with
student leadership. For the present, this report deserves a wide audience:
suggestions about its circulation and publication would be welcomed.
Our thanks are due to the generosity of the Guerrand- Hermès Foundation for
Peace for their generous support and active interest in encouraging this body of
thinking in the interests to children in school.
John Bazalgette
10 July 2009