It is 4th July, 2024. America celebrates its independence, while I exercise my right as a citizen of the United Kingdom to vote in the parliamentary election.
As I stand in a queue inside the polling station to cast my vote for the parliamentary seat of Ely and South Cambridgeshire, I notice a young man who can’t be much more than 18 standing in the queue. By midnight, it is his vote and that of his peers, all of whom are in school or vocational learning that are counted and contribute to the seismic shift in my political landscape.
The new Labour government’s manifesto launched for the election showcased its intention to reduce the age of voting eligibility to young people of 16 years of age! Now that really got me thinking. Today our young people are entitled to choose the party that they wish to govern their country and they can protect their nation as a member of their armed forces. This should mean we are confident that we have enabled them to think as individuals, even voting differently from their parents and their peers because they believe in their own decisions.
Immediately, my thoughts go to all the 18-year-olds [1] in India who are eligible to vote in national elections. In India where I work, only 34% of 18-year-olds are still enrolled in a school or other educational institutions. How many of them, I wondered, would have voted independently of what their families thought? Are we doing enough for them to think independently and for the best interests of others their age inside the schools they attend?
For this coming generation, whether they are born in Cambridge or Kolkata, the world will be a more complex space than the one we inhabit today. The children who enrol in school this year will graduate in 2040. They will live in a complex technological world in which even Chat GPT could have been replaced by the latest innovation. They most probably will see tremendous changes in their family structures. The world of work may be unrecognisable from what it is today, and students will most probably be learning in ways that do not require memorisation and regurgitation of content.
Students in 2040 will need to make independent decisions that their parents will not be able to help them with, for themselves, and perhaps even for their families and society. So, let’s begin the enquiry into how we are enabling them to get there in our schools today:
● How old are your students when they are first introduced to formulating their thinking and learning through enquiry?
● When do they begin to experiment and innovate?
● What choices do they have about how and what they learn?
● Is there a personal, social and health education programme embedded in the curriculum throughout their school years?
● Do they have a voice in decisions that are made in school that impact on them?
● Is there a formal student body and are they oriented to servant leadership?
● Is there an expectation of teachers that they will promote student voice in their classrooms and in the community?
On 27th July, I will be leading an Adhyayan community of practice exploring the landscape of Student Voice in school. Come and join the inquiry and contribute to the debate.
It was the beginning of the school year, and I was visiting one of our K-10 partner schools in Mumbai. I was walking along the corridor on my way to see the head of senior school when I saw a group of students waiting outside her office. They were deep in conversation about their new timetable, and they weren’t happy. As soon as she was free, the head asked the students and I to join her in her office. The students, all from Grade 10, launched into what was wrong with the timetable and then, unexpectedly for me, came up with what they thought was a better and less stressful model. For two or three minutes their head of school listened intently. When they paused for breath, she responded, “I get why you are unhappy, and I’m so pleased that you have come with a sensible solution and not just a problem. But any change must work for Grade 9 as well as for your grade. So, I want you to go away and look at the whole of the senior school timetable to check on the impact of your suggestion on the Grade 9 students and teachers.” The year was 2011.
Track forward a decade, I am in an international K-12 school in NCR. This time the issue is dress code. If students have strong views about their timetable, they are passionate about justice and implied discrimination! A teacher had confronted one of the students in a corridor about what she was wearing and its suitability for school. Their counsellor and head of school who addressed the incident with the student and teacher were approached by the student council about the public nature of the rebuke and just as importantly the vagueness and potential unfairness of the school dress code. The teacher felt aggrieved because from her perspective she was upholding what she believed to be the school’s guidance. The response of the school’s leadership after managing the incident? It asked both the student congress and the teachers to sit together and come up with an unambiguous dress code which would be owned by both students and staff.
In both schools, the impact of these individual moments was to affirm the culture of the schools which promoted the deliberate engagement of students in their school life. In the first, the students went away, they talked with and listened to their teachers and crucially got the agreement of the Grade 9 students before they returned to the leadership who promptly agreed to the timetable change. As for the International school, it kept to its promise. After consulting the student forum and undertaking staff consultations, the student congress with their partner teacher presented the revised code at a whole staff meeting. The revised dress code which with minor amendments then became school policy.
As a teacher, a leader, a school inspector and a programme and policy designer and deliverer, I love the fact that in both schools by embracing student and staff voice and involving them in finding a solution, these schools promoted critical thinking, collaboration and consensus, key qualities critical to learning and community cohesion.
My reflection question for us as educators: Could this have happened in our school or network? Can you think of a time when your school promoted and then delivered on student and staff voice. Share the occasion and the conversation with us.
For those of us who don’t have a story, reflect on any missed opportunities and on what you may want to do the next time an opportunity presents itself.
