Lesson video

Hello, my name is Mrs. Shortland.

And this is a brand new unit of Citizenship.

We'll be exploring how young people can be active in a democracy throughout the next few lessons.

Today, all you're going to need is a pen and a piece of paper so if you can pause the video now to sort your equipment out and find somewhere quiet to study if you can, and then take down your title and rejoin me when you're ready.

I'll see you in a bit.

Hello, and welcome back.

In this lesson, we're going to have a look at how you can contribute to school decision making.

To learn that really to break up this lesson.

We're going to have a look at why does student voice matter? How do I influence decision makers? And have a look at Martha Payne and NCL Parliament two case studies.

And we're going to have a look at a section where you will use your voice as well.

But in particular, we're going to look at the idea of democratic decision making, and how young people have helped to make changes in their school by working together to make real differences to the lives of others.

But what does democratic decision making mean? Well, the UK is a democracy.

It's a country where people choose their government.

And in the UK, there are too many people to ask and too many decisions to take.

Therefore, representatives are elected to make decisions.

And if you think about your school environment, it's a little bit like a mini democracy.

People in school make decisions on your behalf every day.

And at times, you'll be given the opportunity to vote on options presented to you.

In fact, the school council exists to make sure that young people have a say in matters that affect them.

If you voted to elect your student council representative, then you've been given power to decide.

And this is the democratic decision making in action.

That's what will happen today.

When you contribute to the life of your school and community, you become an active citizen.

But how do you become an active citizen? Well, being a citizen at school, you have lots of rights.

As you can see those rights all over the right hand side of this screen in pink.

You also have the right to take part in school decision making.

And there are two ways you can take part in democratic decision making.

Firstly, you could get involved directly through the student council.

Or you could set up your own campaign and activity that you feel is important.

Take the idea to a decision maker in school.

See what happens.

So being a citizen in school is just about taking responsibility and creating change.

There are lots of people involved at every level of school decision making.

Have a look at the diagram.

It looks a bit daunting, doesn't it? But all it shows is that there are levels of decision makers involved with schools.

So within your school, there's a hierarchy of people and people in power.

People that have power to make decisions about certain issues.

So if you want to raise some money for a local charity, and wanted a non school uniform day, you think about the person that had the power to do that.

And probably you approach your head teacher because they're the only person really that can make that decision.

And if you wanted to invite a guest speaker into an assembly, then perhaps you're Head of Year might be the right person to ask.

Look at the person at the top.

Well, it's actually a department.

And there's lots of people within that department that work to make it function well.

If you wanted to change the curriculum in England, for example, let's say including more citizenship in the curriculum, then you'd have to approach the Department of Education via your Member of Parliament.

So there's lots of different levels.

And you can see on the bottom right hand corner, there's you, you're in this diagram too.

And if you know where to go, you can influence those different people.

Okay, time for your first task already.

So, for this task, you need to pause the video in a minute.

I would like you to think about your school, and how much young people are listened to.

But I'd also like you to think about why young people might not be listened to, or what stops them from getting involved in activities at school and being part of the decision making process.

Task number one, draw an arch and place the dial in the position that shows how well students are listened to in your school, which just means drawer dial.

So if you think, "Wow, we're really listened to, no problem there at all." Then you would draw your dial more towards the right hand side of the screen.

But if you thought, "Ah, well, we're really not listened to at all." It would go towards the left.

Then make a list of all the barriers to participation in decision making in your school.

So pause the video now to have a go at that activity.

And I'll see you back here in a bit.

How did you do? So here's a model example of thinking about my school.

"In my school students are consulted at every level.

"They have an active student council "make up the views of students "and make sure their concerns are heard by the principal.

"They use the principle of democratic decision making, "by making suggestions and voting on an issue.

"They're all active citizens." And I've put the definition there, if you want to copy that down.

An active citizen is just a person who actively takes responsibility, becomes involved in areas of public concern and tries to make a difference.

The second part of that activity that I asked you to do was to have a think about reasons why people might not feel that they can contribute to school decision making.

So here are some ideas that I sought.

I'm sure you've got a lot more than these.

Perhaps it's because they don't know how to influence decisions.

Maybe some students are not interested.

Maybe adults don't take your ideas seriously and so students are put off by talking to adults to try and change things.

And also, sometimes students can't meet easily due to time constraints.

So that's some of the reasons then about why people might have barriers to taking part in decision making and active opportunities at school.

When thinking about how you can contribute to your school and decision making we're talking about developing a skill, aren't we here? Developing the skill of active citizenship.

But what do active citizens do? Well, they keep informed about what's going on in school.

They know what the issues are for young people and how the school is managed and run.

They take part in school activities and school councils, Duke of Edinburgh Award.

They might support charities and events that school organises or simply vote in school elections.

But they're certainly a role model for other students challenging any in justices and supporting other people where they're needed.

So you might be thinking, "Okay, I know who an active citizen is "but is it really important to become an active citizen?" Well, in a perfect world, we would see meaningful student involvement for every student in every school all of the time.

But for many reasons, this is difficult to achieve.

So it's really important that young people become active citizens and work together with others, to improve the lives of all people, which ultimately will benefit you as well.

So by participating in the life of your school, you will influence decisions that affect you.

And this is so important.

They're all the reasons that you can see on the screen.

Firstly, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child states that "All young people under the age of 18 "have the right to participate in decision making." So this article, Article 12, recognises that you have the right to express your opinions, and to have your opinions considered in decisions that affect you.

Also, if you get involved, participation prepares you for life.

Lots of research shows that if you're supported to participate in decision making, you're more likely to have an increased sense of confidence and make positive career choices, which leads to having greater involvement and responsibilities in the future.

It also improves the life of the school because giving young people a place in decision making builds greater involvement, doesn't it? Ans create stronger more inclusive environments, because everybody's listened to.

Adults understand the issues that matter because you're talking to them, and work, they're working with young people to improve the environment.

And when all this happens, people develop greater feelings of well being and self worth because everyone is sharing skills and ideas.

Decisions are likely to be better if everyone is involved.

And if people have their say, they're more likely to support decisions that other people have.

So participation really brings people together, it breaks down lots of barriers and encourages mutual respect and tolerance.

So, you've learned an awful lot so far.

let's just recap everything.

Using this gap fill activity, you're ready.

I would like you to complete the sentence, choosing the correct words that you can see at the bottom.

I'd like to pause the video now and write out that sentence just filling in all of the gaps using the words below.

And I'll see in a bit.

How did you do with the answers? I'm sure you got the more right.

"Student participation matters.

"Firstly, all children have rights, "which are guaranteed and protected "by the United Nations Convention "on the Rights of the Child.

"Further, when young people participate "in the decision making of their schools, "it can lead to better school performance, "as well as improving life at school for everyone.

"When students are consulted and listened to "their needs can be met." So leave that up for a second, or you can pause the video and just make any corrections if you need to do that.

Good job.

So far, we've looked at decision makers considered what active citizens are and why it's important to be active.

Let's start applying this learning to your own school.

And I'd like you to think about your school just for a minute.

It's probably huge like mine with lots of different areas to think about.

But I'd like to imagine that you wanted to dive in, be an active citizen and try and influence the decision making in your school.

Which area would you focus on? Let's split your school into three areas to make that a little bit easier.

So you could think about the school community or the services, clubs and facilities that it has.

So anything that needs improving there was about partnerships and all those issues and concerns around the community of your school.

Or something you could think about the culture of your school what's the environment like when you walk in? Are people included? Are attitudes and aspirations high? What about the curriculum? Think about the lessons and the different subjects and the options that you have.

So have a think about those three areas.

And let's break that down even further.

Here's some ideas that I came up with.

You might think about improving trips, or the food in the canteen, or school speakers and charities, or something specific about your school playground.

Maybe there's not enough things for students to do, maybe you need some more equipment in the playground, just to make life a little bit more interesting.

You can think about the culture of your school as well.

Making sure that messages about anti racism and homophobia are well understood.

You might think about areas of the curriculum.

You have enough GCSE options.

What about the lesson content? What about careers? So what I'd like you to do is pause the video, have a look at these ideas, and try and think about what could be improved at your school? If you are, see you in a minute.

I'll give you a few minutes to do that.

Okay, so you may or may not have ideas at this stage.

And that's absolutely fine.

Your school might be absolutely perfect there's nothing to be improved.

But what you're doing today is you're learning about how you could make changes perhaps in the future or if somebody else asks you about how to go about making changes at school.

So if you do have an idea at the moment, much and that you've identified a really important issue, what is it that you need to do next? Well, many things that you could do to start to influence school decision making.

Once you've got your issue, just follow these steps that you can see on the hand.

And we'll go through them in a minute.

But they're basically identify need to collecting evidence, thinking about the cause and effect, planning your action, and then carrying it out.

So let me show you what I mean by how you can take action using that strategy.

So let's say the need that you've identified is that there's a lack of facilities or clubs, it should be sort of a problem in the community of the school.

The next thing to do is to collect primary and secondary research and probably research is all the data that you collect yourself.

Photographs and surveys, questionnaires, that sort of thing.

Secondary research is something that's already carried out by someone else.

So you might want to look at a magazine articles, journals, or the Office of National Statistics that holds lots of data about lots of different topics.

You're primarily thinking about what people want? And what are the concerns around the lack of facilities here? Then you need to think about the cause and effect.

How can this issue be fixed? Why is there a lack of facilities? How is it affecting young people? What's needed? Thinking about cause and effect helps you to identify all the causes of the problem.

And that way, you'll perhaps come up with a solution a lot quicker.

The next thing you do when you've thought about the problems, thought about some of the solutions, is to plan the action.

So here, you need to think about who are the decision makers that I need to influence? What outsider groups can I enlist? What change is needed? How will I create change? When I talk about outsider groups, I mean, other organisations that actually might be able to help.

So perhaps there is an organisation, a Sporting Club, that could help provide cheap or free facilities for your school, for example.

And then you need to carry out the action.

Thinking about how you're going to campaign.

Are you going to do it by petitioning? Are you going to write a letter? If you're over 13, will you use social media and social media of your school as well as maybe your own accounts? What about assemblies or involving the local press? So let's have a think about a real campaign.

Now, you might have seen this one before.

It's a very old campaign.

But it's still really relevant because Martha Payne made huge changes that are lasting still today.

And for her what she did, she identified the issue.

She wanted to change her school meals.

She felt they weren't nutritious, nutritious.

No one was giving her second helpings ever.

So she thought, "This is not good enough.

"We need to do something about this." She started to collect evidence.

She photographed her school meals and wrote about what she ate.

And the big problem was that children were not getting nutritious meals.

Many were still hungry, and that could lead to health issues.

And a lack of attention span in school.

So she felt that this was a real problem.

She needed to make a change.

She needed to go to the school principal, and the local council to try and otter school meals.

She set up a blog, you can actually go to that blog, it still exists.

It's called "NeverSeconds" and have a look at some of the pictures she took.

So she sets up the blog 'cause she was under age with the help of a dad's post and he posted pictures for her.

And then she carried the action out.

She invited children all around the world to post their own pictures and her blog went viral.

The media and celebrities got involved.

The school changed its menu and provided second helpings of fruits and vegetables for all students.

It's quite a remarkable case study.

It'd be great, if you could go off and research you can find videos online, all about the work that Martha took part in.

Martha Payne's campaign was absolutely brilliant.

However, a more recent campaign has been started by NCL, Student Parliament, #Tin410.

Students felt that they needed to be more supportive of local charities, but which one was proving to be difficult.

So they identified the issue.

They wanted to school to adopt to charity.

And they needed to collect evidence to see which charity students most preferred to support.

They did this by gathering lots of opinions, got in lots of suggestions.

And then to be more democratic, they set up a school wide vote.

A homeless charity came out on top.

And then they researched this issue.

They found out that 320,000 people are currently homeless in the UK.

And that the problem is even worse after Christmas because at this time, people just stopped donating food.

So they went to the principal who's the main decision maker here and they ask them permission to start to have a look at adopting this charity.

They needed to plan the action.

So after meeting with the principal, to galvanise staff support, they also met with an MP.

They wrote letters to schools to see if they wanted to get involved and use lots of social media to recruit schools.

And the created a campaign video on issue.

Now they knew that they couldn't possibly hope to feed 320,000 people in the UK.

But they thought if every student in Leicester brought in one tin of food, they would raise 32,000 tins that could at least provide one main meal for the homeless population in Leicester.

So, that's what they set about doing.

And they were very successful in this.

They carried out the action, they got a news team to cover the story.

And they contacted an action homeless who would receive the tins.

And he can see on delivery day, just a few of the tins that they managed to collect.

It was really successful.

So where is the issue? 320, 000 people are homeless in the UK.

This is not good enough.

What is the government doing? If they're not doing anything, we will.

We could all do something to raise awareness and change the statistics.

What is the solution? There 54,000 students aged between five and 18 in Leicester city alone.

Passion of each student to bring a tin of food or food item that can be sent to organisation and provide meals to the homeless, we can feed over 10% of the population.

This is our Tin for the Tenth campaign.

Imagine if it spread across the country.

One student, one tin.

A tin does not just represent giving, we wish to send a clear message.

Homelessness isn't the fault of the individual.

There are many reasons why people become homeless, there's poverty and unemployment.

Lack of affordable housing with the rent.

Relationships breaking down or losing a job.

When you bring a tin to school, you're not only helping we all say, we don't judge, we won't discriminate.

We've learned about this issue, and we understand.

There's no stigma here.

Please get involved in our campaign.

It is up to young people to lead the way for change.

While calling on every student in every city school, please tell your teachers to support the campaign.

Get everyone in your school to bring in one tin, you just need to tweet #Tin410 to let us know how many tins you've raised and we'll take em' all.

Let's make a real change and send a clear message that no one should be homeless.

Thank you from the Student Department #Tin410, #ThisIsUs, #There'sNoStigmaHer.

So task four, what can you recall? I've gone through so much information I hope your brain's feeling okay.

And not ready to explode.

What I'd like you to do is have a look at these four questions write one to four down your page, and then you're going to choose A, B or C.

If you pause the video now have a read of the questions write down your answers and we'll get back to you in a second we'll all get back to you in a second with some answers.

All right, pause the video now, see you in a bit.

How did you do? Okay, let's have a look at these answers.

The first thing to do when planning to influence decision making is B, identify the issue.

Martha Payne's campaign was called C, NeverSeconds.

How did NCL Student Parliament influence decision makers? Well, they B, met with the principal and local MP to get staff and students on board.

And then Question number four, which of these methods is primary research? It was C, a questionnaire.

So make your corrections.

Give yourself a big tick.

And we'll be ready to move on in a second.

Here we are, can you believe that is the last task? Let's put everything we've learned together now.

Task five, how important is it for students to contribute to school decision making? I've put some information that might help you to write a nice couple of paragraphs to answer that question.

I'd like you to consider your opinion and explain why student voice is or is not important in schools.

Remember those reasons we did right at the start.

Could you use any of the case studies we covered? Could you provide an example of what might need changing in your school and how you might go about it? Some sentence clusters there if you need them.

So have a think about everything we've learned today.

Go back over to your notes.

And I would like you to spend about 10 minutes just answering that question.

Pause the video now when you're ready to carry on to finish the lesson just unpause it.

How did you do? Here's a model answer that I came up with.

I'm sure yours is much better.

You could add in any bits of information that I've included perhaps that you haven't.

And you could certainly extend some points that I make here as well.

So let's have a look at what this says.

"Many people would argue that students should contribute "to school decision making.

"Children do have the right "to have their opinions taken into account "in decisions that concern them.

"According to the United Nations Convention "on the Rights of the Child." Under Article 12, you can put that in there as well, couldn't you? "More than this, studies have shown "that student participation improves the school "and local communities." I've answered how or why.

So, again, that sentence could be extended.

"There are many decision makers in school, "and it's important to know just how to influence them.

"For example, Martha Payne was concerned "about the standard of school meals that were being served.

"She started to collect evidence, talked to her principal, "and then created a blog site "to share images and conversation.

"After this successful, Martha spoke to the local council "to improve school meals in her area.

"I believe students should contribute "to decision making in school.

"Students should have a say "when it comes to their education.

"Voice is power." Okay, I'm sure you did a lot better, as I said before.

So that's it.

You've done so well today, lots and lots of information.

We've had a look at why does student voice matter? We talked about how to influence decision makers? And actually had some examples of Martha Payne and NCL Parliament in their campaigns.

And then lastly, I'm hoping that you've written a brilliant account, and used your voice in that final activity.

All that's left to do now is if you're able to, please take a picture of your work, and ask your parent or carer to share it with your teacher so they can see all the fantastic things you've learned today.

And if you'd like, ask your parent or carer to send a picture of your work to @National.

I always get that bit wrong.

To @OakNational on Twitter so I can see your lovely work too, well done.

Don't forget though, just to complete the exit quiz now.

And very best of luck with that.

I'm sure you get all those correct.

All that's left for me to say is thank you very much for taking part.

Take care of yourself and enjoy the rest of your learning for today.

Bye.