The Power of Pupil Voice

Pupil voice is one of the most, if not the most, powerful thing that secondary age students have at their disposal. Time and time again, the systems that are often already in place, such as school councils, show to be nothing more than just a box-ticking exercise — a vain attempt of student representation and expression. The overall power of pupil voice however, is undoubtedly not a futile effort… far from it.

Late last November, a group of year 11 students from my school, including myself, wrote an open letter to the senior management team expressing our unhappiness with how we were being treated by our heads of year. 

Was it an unconventional way to tell a teacher you are unhappy? Yes. 

Did it have a high chance of being something you look back upon and wonder why on Earth you did that? Absolutely.

But did it garner over 100 signatures from our year and contribute to getting us, along with other things, a whole week off school for revision? Heck yeah it did.

There is no doubt that the pandemic has profoundly affected education, and policymakers seemingly did not know much more than the average teacher. Just before Christmas, schools in Wales faced a tough situation; closing a week early for Christmas and staying shut for an indefinite amount of time meant that evidence for potential centre assessed grades needed to be gathered and fast. So, my school made the obvious and simple decision of “Let’s just give them a full round of mocks next week. What could go wrong?”

Well… what went wrong was that they didn’t factor the pupils into the equation. We had been given less than a week’s notice (For some subjects just 4 days!) for a full round of mocks that were going to potentially determine the final grades we got for our GCSE’s.

This was understandably more than a little frustrating for a lot of people, so myself and a few other students decided to address the issue head-on. Going through form teachers or subject teachers would have been slow and unlikely to succeed. The school council hadn’t been running this year because of the pandemic. We decided the best way to address the issue was to go straight to our Heads of Year. We also agreed that we needed to show that a very high percentage of pupils agreed with us on the issue.

Over a weekend, we drafted the letter and contacted everyone we could to get the highest possible number of names added to the bottom of that letter. There’s about 200 people in my year, and we got over half of them to add their names. Aside from protests or striking, it was perhaps the most blatant form of pupil voice expression that we could have done. On Monday morning, the writers of the letter marched to our Head of Year’s office and handed it to them directly.

After several nerve-wracking hours, we were offered a meeting with several members of the senior staff. After they pushed the meeting time back twice, we met with them. We discussed our concerns about the mocks along with several other vital issues that we wrote about (and also had a follow-up meeting!). We successfully managed to confirm that we would have less mocks (some subjects had given us 2), there would be a set timetable for when they take place (not just up to individual teachers!), and most importantly a full week study leave to properly prepare for the mocks.

This all just goes to show that when being expressed in the right way, pupil voice is not powerless, and together students can achieve big things. The conventional method of students expressing their views is, more often than not, not helpful in achieving what pupils actually want. 

Furthermore, this can be applied to a far wider reach than something as simple as expressing discontent about mocks. It goes to show that movements like the youth strike movement can achieve their aims, even if dismissed by some as just a group of kids wanting a day off. Students united, are a force to be reckoned with.