Background

In December 2023, Kerri went to visit one of our Smart School Council members, Pensby High School.

Pensby High School is a large secondary school based in the Wirral and their Lead Teacher is Sara Teare, the Head of PSHE and Spanish Teacher. Sara has been leading the Smart School Council for a while now and on Kerri’s visit it was lovely to see not only how well established the school council is at the school, but also how positively the programme is received by pupils and staff there. 

Top Tip #1: Include the whole school community in your Smart School Council

Sara is passionate about giving her students a voice, whether through class meetings or Big Debate Club. One of the first things that Kerri noticed about Pensby was how well embedded the Smart School Council programme was in the school. She met staff who worked in the school office, staff who led the school Pride group and form tutors; they all knew what the Smart School Council was and were involved in it in different ways. Sara also sends out a weekly bulletin with the details of the class meetings each week, as well as updating their progress board with the current stats using the graphs created in the Class Meeting Tool, which means that everyone in school is aware of what is happening.

Top Tip #2: Use the video link feature to help deepen understanding

Kerri was lucky enough to observe a class meeting with a group of year 9 students during her visit. Sara had given the students some slides with additional information to help to develop the students’ understanding and discussion further. She prefers to use questions with a video or additional information included to encourage deeper thinking - and after our visit, we now make sure that any of our more challenging topics have a video included in the pre-set questions in the tool. During the meeting, the students had an informed and lively discussion on identity and gender. Two students led the meeting and took notes, while the class were able to feedback their group’s ideas and give in their votes. The meeting was pacey while still allowing for discussion, and all students were able to feed into their group’s decisions. 

Top Tip #3: Bring together different student action groups

Visiting Pensby taught us a lot about how the Smart School Councils programme can be used regularly in a busy secondary school, where staff are often wearing multiple hats. Students in a variety of action groups, such as the Eco Team, Charities Team and Pride Team used the programme to build networks between their groups,and to raise their questions with the wider school community. This was a really successful way to get all staff and students at school involved in different ways.

Thank you, Sara, for showing us how you are raising your students’ voices. It was great to see how well your students are able to discuss, debate and lead change at Pensby High. 

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