The Bluffer’s Guide To…Student Voice
Should children influence school policy? Of course not, they’re children. But if your head insists on this student council malarkey, Jon Brunskill can help make their say, your say
The vote to leave the EU has shown us, once again, that democracy is the worst form of government (except for all of the others).
Not dissuaded by this uncomfortable truth, it’s now quite common for groovy headteachers to insist on some sort of ‘pupil voice’ under the touching assumption that small children might stumble across something worth listening to.
I have it on good authority that just saying ‘pupil voice’ often and loudly ‘looks good for Ofsted’. So, you know, no further justification necessary.
But you must take care as you embark on your Machiavellian experiment; follow this Bluffer’s Guide, and you’ll not only learn to manipulate a group of tiny puppet-rulers, but also disillusion them from any form of political activity for the rest of their lives.
Get the branding right
We’ve all met people with ludicrously lofty job titles only to later discover that they are, in fact, mostly responsible for ensuring that the office has an appropriate supply of paper-clips. ‘Chief Strategy, Logistics and Operations Director’ just sounds more important.
Clearly, the old-fashioned ‘Student Council’ isn’t going to cut it if you really want to wow visitors and rouse tears of pride from naïve parents. Choose something like: High Council for Student Affairs, Complementary Executive Board, or Fellowship of Educational Excellence.
Gain buy-in with pseudo-profundity
Do you believe that children are the future? That you should teach them well and let them lead the way? You don’t? You monster.
Pseudo-profundity, as philosopher Stephen Law explains, is ‘the art of sounding profound while spouting tosh’. Employing this rhetorical technique is an excellent strategy for both gaining investment and quashing any dissent.
The trick is to solemnly state either banal truisms or baffling contradictions. “If we don’t let them spread their wings, how will we see them fly?” is both completely vacuous and yet very difficult to contradict. “There is true wisdom in ignorance…” obviously makes no sense, but if someone points that out then you can simply give a condescending smile and reassure them that one day, they’ll understand.
Rig the election
Although democracy is essentially a massive popularity contest, it’s imperative that you don’t allow your elections to become a massive popularity contest. Left to their own devices, the children will almost certainly choose Patrick who, to be fair, can run really fast and did once eat a whole drum of super sour Toxic Waste sweets in one mouthful.
Of course, what you’d really like is a ‘sensible child’; the sort who thinks homework is a good idea and holds doors open for adults. Some would argue there is a huge contradiction in asking for children’s views but only accepting the ones that you like, but in response, I would ignore that criticism.
Ask leading questions
Even after hand-picking a crack team of the most precocious minds in your school, they will need a lot of guidance. And by ‘guidance’, I mean they should become a convenient mouthpiece for your own ideas, beliefs and suggestions.
Unless you want to spend an hour each week listening to mind-numbingly dull proposals about whether lunch should be served with additional tomato ketchup, you should prep what you’d like to be achieved beforehand. A new coffee machine in the staffroom would be nice, wouldn’t it?
Simply explain to them why they agree with your idea or, better yet, convince them they thought of it in the first place.
Hang teachers out to dry
A more recent development in student voice is the particularly insidious notion that children should have some sort of formal role in appraising and evaluating their teachers. With budgets becoming tighter each year, your Junior Leadership Team provides you with the grease that you need to make that pay scale even trickier to climb.
The feedback sessions should also provide some comedy gold, as an eight-year-old sensitively informs an exasperated professional that their lesson on long division had “too much maths in it” and could be improved with “chocolate, Justin Bieber and Minecraft”.
Follow these steps and you will turn what should be a tokenistic, box-ticking non-entity into a powerful and immutable force. None will be able to challenge you as you sanction and eliminate initiatives at your will. After all, who can argue against children’s right to have a voice? Who can argue against democracy?
Jon Brunskill is the head of Year Two at Reach Academy Feltham. He tweets at @jon_brunskill.
