Making children’s and students’ voices heard
Schools have a key role in upholding this principle. At the same time, students need to be aware of both their rights and responsibilities.
Learning about human rights and democracy is a fundamental first step for becoming an informed and responsible citizen.
Students also need to participate in activities such as debating and community work. Skills, knowledge and critical understanding must be coupled with the attitudes and values that form part of a democratic culture. All this should be promoted through a whole-school approach.
Facts & figures
While students make up approximately 92% of any given school’s population, the decisions in school are routinely made by the remaining 8% who are adults.[1]
Students learn better when they are engaged partners throughout the educational process.[2]
What is student voice?
Student voice is the right of students to have a say in matters that affect them in their schools, and to have their views and opinions taken seriously. It encompasses all aspects of school life and decision-making where young learners are able to make a meaningful contribution, adapted to their age and stage of development. It stretches from informal situations in which students express an opinion to their peers or staff members to participation in democratic structures or mechanisms, such as student parliaments and consultations.
Student voice can vary from simple self-expression to taking on a leadership role in an aspect of school life. It can be characterised according to a 6-fold typology of increasing complexity and responsibility:
- Expression – voice an opinion
- Consultation – asked for an opinion
- Participation – attend and preferably play an active role in a meeting
- Partnership – have a formal role in decision-making
- Activism – identify a problem, propose a solution, and advocate its adoption
- Leadership – plan and make decisions
Given that the relevant activities are age-appropriate, student voice can be expressed anywhere in the school community, in and out of lessons, e.g., through inviting students to comment on teaching approaches and techniques, suggest topics for class discussion, participate in school policy committees and/or consultations, or just join in a casual conversation on school matters with a teacher or other staff member in their free time.
Why is student voice important at school?
Student voice is rooted in the concept of children’s rights and human rights. In particular, Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) establishes the right of every child to have a say in matters which affect them, whether in or out of school, as well as to be involved in decisions that affect them. More generally, the UNCRC includes other articles that seek to increase students’ voice, including the right to seek and receive information, to express their own views and to associate with others.
UN Convention on the Rights of the Child: Article 12
“Parties shall assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child.”[3]
Student voice can have many benefits both for schools and the wider society – for example:
- Participation in school decision-making fosters a sense of citizenship in young learners, helping them to develop important competences, e.g. co-operation and communication skills, self-efficacy, responsibility, civic-mindedness and respect for the value of democracy – all of which lie at the heart of the Council of Europe Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (RFCDC).
- Contributing to their school community gives young learners a sense of belonging, develops self-esteem and can lead to more respectful relationships. This has a positive influence on school discipline and helps to reduce the incidence of problems such as drop-out, bullying, substance abuse and radicalisation.
- Engaging students in active learning activities in class has a positive effect not only on the classroom atmosphere, but also on the educational achievements of students and their peers.
What are the challenges?
There are a number of major areas of challenge facing the development of student voice in schools.
The first relates to the attitudes of other school stakeholders. Parents, teachers school leaders and others who have traditional views of schooling sometimes feel that children and young people should be ‘seen and not heard’ in school. They think respect for others and for authority are best developed in a culture of deference. To counteract attitudes of this kind school leaders need to introduce elements of student voice gradually, explaining the process clearly to school stakeholders and sharing the successes with them when they take place.
Some stakeholders may see empowering young learners through student voice as undermining their own power or position of authority in the school. Teachers may sometimes feel that students have more rights than they have. This merely underlines the importance of developing a whole-school culture in which all stakeholders feel safe to express their opinions freely and openly, and to have their opinions taken seriously. Student voice goes hand in hand, therefore, with the creation of a general culture of democracy and human rights in school.
The second major area of challenge is ensuring that student participation is genuine participation and not tokenism or ‘window-dressing’. This means giving students opportunities to make a real difference to their lives and the lives of other school stakeholders, and helping staff to be more open to sharing their decision-making with young learners.
The Ladder of Children’s Participation
Roger Hart, in the book Children's Participation: The Theory And Practice Of Involving Young Citizens In Community Development And Environmental Care, developed the concept of a ‘ladder of participation’ which can be applied to student voice. He suggested eight different levels or degrees of student voice, from the simplest - which is little more than the manipulation of students for the school’s benefit - to activities where decision-making is genuinely shared between adults and young learners.
A third area of challenge is the difficulty of making opportunities for student voice equally open to all students. The problem arises to some extent on account of the perception that student voice applies only to formal school structures, like pupil parliaments. For stakeholders with more traditional attitudes towards teaching and learning it can be difficult to see student voice as integral to, rather than separate from the learning process in classrooms. Another aspect of this problem is that it is the more confident and out-going students who are prepared to voice their opinions openly or stand in class or school council elections. How to integrate student voice into learning and to involve a wider range of students in the process is a whole-school responsibility and needs to be taken seriously as an area of whole-school planning and as an important topic for teacher professional development.
How can schools get active?
There are a number of ways in which schools can develop more opportunities for student voice. These include:
- Encouraging teaching staff to consider how they can involve students in the learning process in the classroom, e.g., by creating more opportunities for students to express their own opinions, debate issues, make suggestions or draw up classroom rules;
- Creating mechanisms for student consultation on issues affecting school life, e.g., through questionnaires, suggestion boxes, surveys or focus groups;
- Establishing formal bodies or procedures, e.g., pupil parliaments, student committees and commissions, or ‘circle time’;
- Inviting students to sit on school policy-development committees, e.g., on gender equality, pupil safety or health and well-being;
- Teaching young learners the skills of public speaking and debate, e.g., discussion skills, active listening or argumentation;
- Providing opportunities for peer-led activities, e.g., peer education, peer assessment or peer counselling.
[1] https://soundout.org/why-student-voice-a-research-summary/
[2] https://soundout.org/why-student-voice-a-research-summary/ ; Beaudoin, N. (2005). Elevating student voice: How to enhance participation, citizenship, and leadership. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education
[3] UN General Assembly, Convention on the Rights of the Child, 20 November 1989, United Nations
Resources on Making children’s and students’ voices heard
Multimedia
Official texts
Policy documents
Studies
Higher education for democratic innovation (Council of Europe Higher Education Series No. 21) (2016)
Tools
Related schools projects
Address:
Country:
Project: “Let your greatness blossom”
Working language during the project:
Themes of the Council of Europe campaign “FREE to SPEAK, SAFE to LEARN - Democratic Schools for All” covered:
- Making children’s and students’ voices heard
- Addressing controversial issues
- Preventing violence and bullying
- Dealing with propaganda, misinformation and fake news
- Tackling discrimination
- Improving well-being at school
Competences from the Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (CDC) addressed and where / how they were integrated:
- Valuing human dignity and human rights
Valuing democracy, justice, fairness, equality and the rule of law
Our school works on the topic of inclusion and has even won an inclusion prize. We try to avoid the word inclusion as it points out special groups of students that are often separated and discriminated. We prefer the word democracy because inclusion is a question of participation and anti-discrimination and human rights. - Knowledge and critical understanding of the world: politics, law, human rights, culture, cultures, religions, history, media, economies, environment, sustainability
Our school got the Title and is part of a national network called „school without racism - school with courage“. We are profoundly proud to have won Esther Bejarano, a 94-year old holocaust survivor as a partner and sponsor of our anti-racism project. - Respect
In Rhineland Palatinate each school decides for annual targets. Our annual target is to work on respect. Different projects and measures took place in the last year to work on this topic, e.g. respect day, respect being a topic in different subjects and lessons…
Target group age range:
- 5-11
- 11-15
- 15-19
Level of education:
- Lower secondary education
Short description of the project:
We understand democracy and anti-discrimination not only as an object of learning but we want to enable our students to understand, learn and apply competences of a democratic culture through two underlying areas.
One area comprises reliable, recurring structures in different areas, which are either anchored in the school year or recur during everyday school life. In order to give a small insight into this area, I would like to mention, for example, the dispute resolution programme learned by students after a basic training, reliably carried out for all students and frequently used in everyday school life. In the lower level e.g. team and cooperation trainings take place regularly.
The pupils of the higher classes regularly visit the Rhineland-Palatinate parliament and discuss with politicians who also come to the school for a return visit. Visits and participation in didactic programmes at a concentration camp memorial site and a synagogue are also regular events.
Every year our entire school community also supports the campaign „Red-Hand-Day“ which can be assigned to the learning area of world understanding.
Currently in the planning stage is the training of students who see themselves as multipliers and who should give advice to their classmates on how to deal with propaganda or hate speech online and offline.
The second area contains those projects, events or competition participations which we develop from the needs and questions or suggestions of our students or from social movements or changes. This includes in particular the area of controversial issues and problems that students often bring to us and which arise from their natural willingness to create and participate. These are often not easy to solve in class discussions and sometimes it takes more than lectures and conversations to understand connections or controversial questions of living together in a society.
In 2016 for example, when millions of people set out and our students saw endless suffering, they began to ask questions about a world in justice, a world without discrimination or bullying - they observed insecurities in society and asked „WHY“. Taking up these suggestions, we designed a project week under the title "we are colourful", which mixed pupils of all levels and which dealt with the topics of origin, impairment and racism in a creative and diverse way and from which, among other things, the project "School without racism - School with courage" emerged within the framework of a working group organised by pupils. The initiating group of pupils first informed themselves, then the school community and collected signatures from all those involved in everyday school life who - convinced by our pupils - committed themselves to stand up against racism and discrimination. Esther Bejarano, a 94-year-old survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp, became a godmother for this project and our students were full of pride in their enthusiasm for a two-day reading and concert event with her. They folded 300 peace doves and just as many buttons for the guests of the event, which was opened by the then Federal Minister of Justice (Dr. Katharina Barley) and at which our inclusive school choir sang as well.
But there are more projects in our house, such as the implementation of a "Respect Day", on which our students dealt with a wide variety of contexts - such as visiting an exhibition by and with visually impaired people in complete darkness, working out ways of reacting to discrimination or violence in everyday life in linguistic as well as graphic, musical and theatrical ways. Theatre plays on the subject of racism were written, staged and performed in front of other schools at an event for "fairness, peace and tolerance".
Our pupils actively supported the municipal "Special Olympics" with their help. In a workshop with wheelchair users, they practised a change of perspective and would not have the common breakfast before school holidays, which often takes place in the classes, where pupils bring specialities from their countries of origin to school - the start into free time would only be half as nice.
Last but not least, I would like to mention the area of competitions: last year we won second place in the inclusive school prize and in 2017 first prize in the Rhineland-Palatinate "One World School Prize" with a short film (stop motion) in which one of our pupils with Down Syndrome was significantly involved.
In every part of school life, be it projects, events or teaching content based on the curriculum, we strive to involve every pupil and to show them that without their participation the big picture of school life is not complete. This means that we open ourselves up in a didactic and methodical way in the classroom and integrate methods away from the purely frontal teaching that positively serve the inclusion of every form of impairment, aptitude, origin and linguistic level, but also make use of the most diverse learning locations.
Aims/objectives
- implement the reference framework in democratic, agreed way
- students and adults for aspects of discrimination in every day life
- find ways to reduce barriers, participate, cooperate and take responsibility for the school (world) we live (and learn) in
- see ourselves as part of the world and world in parts at the same time
Expected results/outcomes
- All students feel welcome and being a part of their class and the school community.
- Students from our school participate e.g. in town parliament
- Students recognise barriers against participation and develop ideas to reduce them.
- Class parliaments take place in every class - more and more in a student focused way
Changes
We are still at the beginning of implementing the competences of a democratic culture in our school development concept. As a result we want to want to transfer our implicit work on this matter into a reflected and agreed concept that works step by step and includes methods of evaluation. This frame is supposed to ensure that projects as well as subjects are included and democracy becomes visible in our school culture.
Challenges you faced
Step by step, our school was able to anchor the idea that projects could not only be designed on a large scale and with the greatest possible power available, but that small steps could also get the ball rolling. In an increasingly performance and certificate-oriented society, it is sometimes difficult to explain why these projects make a major contribution to the comprehensive and holistic education of a child, not only at the level of preparation, implementation and reflection - and that the scope of the cognitive output often extends far beyond the current project. This can be seen particularly clearly in the example of projects which are based on democratic structures when it comes to the involvement of each individual in project development, planning, stabilisation of conception and implementation.
Time-frame of the project:
- Long lasting project (never ending)
Council of Europe materials on citizenship and human rights education used while preparing or implementing your practice:
- Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture
