Pupil Participation in Schools
In April 2004 the Department for Education and Skills issued statutory guidance to schools on pupil participation (‘Working Together’, Ref DfES/0134/2004). The guidance offers advice on how schools might:
- Organise and offer children and young people opportunities to develop their skills as active citizens; and
- Organise a variety of approaches of involving children and young people
| The guidance is a brief document set out in six sections: |
 |
1.What do we mean by pupil participation?
2.What are the benefits?
3.Principles of children’s and young people’s participation
4.Principles into practice
5.Role of the governing body
6.Effective participation – a checklist |
The guidance supports personalised learning through opportunities that already exist in Citizenship education, Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) and in other wider school activities, for example Healthy Schools and the Connexions service. Ofsted also now gives pupils opportunities to give views about their education as part of the inspection process.
There is no single right way of involving children and young people in a school’s decision-making processes. However, the DfES guidance is extremely useful in setting out the key principles that are the necessary building blocks for involving children and young people.
The DfES guidance is supplemented by a National Healthy School Programme (NHSP) briefing ‘Promoting children and young people’s participation’. The NHSP encourages and supports schools to take a whole school approach to promoting physical and emotional health. One of the key criteria against which schools are assessed for healthy school status is the way in which they are ‘giving pupils a voice’. This places pupil participation at the heart of the NHSP and the briefing provides practical suggestions for facilitating it.
www.dfes.gov.uk
