Student Voice

Student Voice is the new school council helping the student's voice become louder.

Student Voice is about students being or becoming more involved in the day to day life of the school, sometimes including important decisions affecting its future. To develop ‘student voice’ at Haydon School, students are being encouraged to develop the skills, understanding and confidence which may enable them to lead different student voice activities.

Student Voice involves actively working with staff in a mature way so that students can have a greater say in the way the school is run and organised, and about how the school is moving forward.

In order to make the students voice more effective 3 Action Teams target the most important aspects of Haydon School that the students believe need a change.

These are;

• Extra-Curricular activities/ Facilities Team
• Social Issues Team
• Teaching and Learning Team

The Extra-Curricular activities/Facilities Team is responsible for discussing ways to improve facilities in the school including the canteen and surrounding areas, so this team will help in improving these areas. They are currently working with Mr Colwill (premises manager) to improve St Nicks area. They have also worked with the PE department to look at ways to improve extra-curricular activities, as well as the school chef to improve canteen facilities by taking suggestions from the students.

The Social Issues Team is the action team in charge of raising awareness of social issues that exist not only in the school community but in the outside world. Their aim is to inform and discuss with students what is going on around them in the contemporary world they live in, as well as raising awareness of the issues that may come to affect them. Currently they are working on a project to improve ‘Pride of Haydon’.

The Teaching and Learning Team discuss interesting ways of interacting with teachers, as well as how effective they believe the teaching at Haydon is. They have discussed the role of the form tutor and have also been involved in developing student champions (observers) of BLP in lessons around the school, feeding back to students and staff on how to improve the use of BLP in the school.

These action teams are made up of students from years 7-13 and are form representatives from every form group in the school who want to make a difference. They speak on behalf of students from Haydon in order to get across what students want and need and feedback to their form groups so that every student in the school can know what is being done by Student Voice.

Within each Action Team there are team leaders and co-leaders who are in charge of the team. They organise and run meetings with the rest of the action team and discuss student voice on the whole as well as plan for the future.

The team leaders make up the Junior Leadership team (JLT) and regularly meet with Miss Jassal (co-ordinator of Student Voice), as well as the deputy heads to discuss issues raised by form reps. The JLT for 2011-2012 are;

Extra-Curricular Activities Team;

Leaders: Alfie Green 10D1

Frankie Shama 12E2

Social Issues Team;

Leaders: Chris Musgrave 12C2

Fiona Heath 12V2

Kshoni Nayyer 7P2

Priyanka Parmar 7P1

Teaching and Learning Team;

Leaders: Shivani Parmar 9P1

Amber Powling 8D2

In recognition of the importance of Student Voice the Senior leadership team decided that Student Voice would be one of the 3 main areas to focus on in the School Improvement Plan for the next 3 years 2010-2013. The other 2 areas are Teaching and Learning and Behaviour for Learning.

One of the things the JLT have already successfully achieved is the creation of a student version of the School Improvement Plan, called the Pupil Improvement Plan (PIP) which was presented to the Head and then to all staff on training day in Sept 2010. A form press pack was given to all form tutors to introduce and discuss the PIP with students in PSHE. The PIP ensures all students know and are able to discuss what is going on in the school.

Furthermore Alfie Green (year 11) and Danni McLeod (Ex Sixth former) stood for election and won their seats on the Hillingdon Youth Council, so will represent Hillingdon in issues raised by students in the borough and will also get the chance to attend and debate in the House of Lords.