Pupil Voice Updates 24-25

Pupil Voice in Quadrant 4

Pupil Leadership Team

In consultation with young people, we developed plans for our first ever Pupil Leadership Team, All young people currently in S4 were invited to take part, with a recruitment process based on formal written applications. Those keen to take on the senior roles of Pupil Leadership Team Coordinators also had to undertake interviews with the House Heads and the Headteacher. Young people were able to outline the skill and qualities that they believe made them suited to the role, explain their motivations for applying, reflect on previous leadership opportunities and share ideas about how we can continue to improve our school. The team has now been selected and will begin their roles in August.

Pupil Voice in Quadrant 3

Rights Respecting Schools

Our RRS group played an important role in the recent Silver accreditation visit. As well as helping to gather evidence of our approaches, pupils also took part in a focus group with the assessors. They were able to articulate the ways in which they already have influence over the life and work of the school, as well as how they plan to further expand. They also invited the headteacher to one of their recent meetings to discuss their proposals for growing the membership of their group. They hope to make significant progress in their journey to Gold next session.

Senior phase dress code

A few of our seniors made a representation around their desire for a more formal dress code in the senior phase. Inline with previous discussion, we created a Google Form to survey all of those in/due to join the senior phase in session 25-26, and their parents. Whilst there was no mandate for significant change, this did allow us to move forward with our suppliers on the design of an optional senior phase tie. This demonstrates a very clear link between pupil voice and direct actions taken.

Recruitment processes

Over the course of this quadrant, young people have been extensively involved in our recruitment processes, providing school tours with questions and answers for:

• Teacher of Art and Design

• Teacher of ASN (The Brae)

• Teacher of Chemistry

• Teacher of English

• Teacher of Home Economics

• Teacher of Maths

• Teacher of Physics

• Home/School Practitioner

It is a real pleasure to hear candidates reflect on their interactions with the young people, with frequent comments on the quality of their questions, their courtesy, and their pride in their school.

Learning, teaching and assessment (LTA)

As an extended leadership team, we have been working to devise a universal LTA survey for every young person in the Broad General Education. This will build on the strong work that already goes on in departments, as highlighted in the update from the last quadrant. It means that every pupil from S1-S3 will have the chance to comment on their experiences around areas including effort, stretch and challenge, questioning and feedback. This will then help us to inform the LTA priorities in our Improvement Plan for 25-26.

Post Occupancy Evaluation

We are fast approaching two years since our building was handed over. As part of the project team’s ongoing work, they have devised a questionnaire to which all young people will be asked to respond, reflecting on what they like or dislike about the building, and how they use it. This information is then used by the architects and construction contractors to influence the decisions they make about future school builds. Young people will be supported to do this through their My World lessons immediately after the Easter holiday.

A note on 5 a day

Due to our significant shortages in the admin team, we have had to pause our usual 5 a day activities during this quadrant. However, they will commence again in Q4.

Pupil Voice in Quadrant 2

ELT evidence

As part of ongoing work with our Extended Leadership Team (ELT), we reflected on the ways in which we gather data via pupil voice across our faculties and subject specialisms. The list below is not exhaustive but gives a flavour of the range of ways in which we give young people opportunities to feedback on their learning experiences and shape what we do as a school.

·       Ambassadors’ programmes: regular meetings with agenda and action points generated by young people

·       Child’s planning processes: pupil views feeding into child’s plans and participation scales for targeted pupils

·       Content choices: for example, text to explore in Languages and Literacy, artists to explore in Expressive Arts.

·       Reflective practice: what could we do differently next time?

·       Exits tasks/passes: in the moment feedback on learning to shape the next lesson

·       Unit/topic reviews: more in-depth explorations of what young people are engaging with best, and what might benefit from changes

·       Identifying strengths: young people can share their interests and ‘what works for me’ to feed into Pupil Information hub for all staff

·       Leadership groups: e.g. Eco Groups, Rights Respecting Schools Group, Sports Scotland ambassadors

·       Restorative approaches and restorative conversations: taking ownership of difficult situations and working with adults to find solutions

·       Wellbeing check ins (see below)#

Wellbeing surveys

Our House Teams undertake regular in person wellbeing checks in on an informal basis for targeted pupils, These are also supported by Homeroom teachers where appropriate. To ensure that we have up to date information on all of our young people, we periodically undertake universal surveys, the most recent of which was in early December. Pupils are asked to rate themselves against each of the Wellbeing Indicators: Safe, Healthy, Achieving, Nurtured, Active, Responsible, Respected, Included. House Teams review this data and undertake two main actions. The first is to follow up any individual data that may give cause for concern. The second is to look at the overall messages from the data with a view to areas of focus within the My World programme.

Rights Respecting Schools

We have also been working hard to ensure that all evidence is in place for our Rights Respecting School Silver Accreditation during Quadrant 3. To quote one member of staff, “It’s not about working out what we need to do, because we’re doing it already- it’s about- showing what we’re doing really clearly”. The accreditation itself involved pupil focus groups discussing the impact of our rights-based approaches.

5 A Day programme

Our 5 a day work this quadrant has been in two key areas. Firstly, were working with all year groups to get a sense of their understanding of their rights and how these are met within the school. Every young person was able to identify one or more of their rights and was able to talk about how these are explored in different subject areas, with most references being to My World, Sustainability, and Modern Studies. Many also drew connections with previous work in their primary schools. Our young people also told us that they feel their rights are met in school because they are provided with an education, kept safe, and can give their opinions, seeing these as being valued. An interesting point for us was around a small number of some of the older pupils feeling ‘we know this already!’ and wondering why we were revisiting the topic with them, which we need to take as a sign that rights feel well and truly embedded for some of our population! This work was complemented by a series of in person assemblies led by Hannah Berg, supporting a shared understanding of how we approach rights as a whole school.

Most recently, we have focused on the topic of safeguarding. Due to senior phase formal assessments, this work has been with the BGE only. Young people were asked initially to rate their sense of safety in our school between 1 and 10, with all but one respondent giving a score of 8 or higher. When we explored the question, ‘Why not a 10?’ there was a real sense of empathy in terms of recognising that some young people struggle with anxiety or have had experience of bullying or poor peer relationships and that this might contribute to feelings of being unsafe. Whilst we would expect most young people to note a member of their House Team as an adult they would approach for help in school, it was interesting to not how many said they could tell ‘any adult’ as this reflects the sense of shared responsibility that we want to foster when it comes to safety and wellbeing. One of my favourite quotations came from an S1 who, when asked to sum up what being safe feels like, said this:

“It’s about not having people saying or doing anything that worries you. You are just learning.”

Pupil Voice in Quadrant 1

This session, we have continued our work on our 5 a Day programme, looking at the following topics:

S1: Transition into secondary

Every young person we spoke to was able to identify significant differences between their primary experience and their experience so far in secondary. Most identified the variety of teachers and subjects, as well as the excitement of making their way to different learning spaces. They also talked about how nice and friendly all the teachers are, which was lovely to hear. Every pupil reported feeling safe in school.

S4: Starting the senior phase

All of the pupils felt that, overall, they were making good progress in their subjects. There was some discussion around the ‘jump’ between S3 and S4, which some felt more than others. There was also a focus on study skills. Most of the young people felt that they would benefit from learning more about study skills and how to support their own learning. This links into the Family Learning session which takes place early next Quadrant, as well as having been fed back to faculties to support them in planning their learning and teaching.

S2/S3: Learning experiences

Following on from our Learning Walks and Learning Visits across the Quadrant (with senior leaders spending time with every class teacher in the school), we dug down into pace and challenge with our young people. They spoke openly about areas where the learning might be a bit too easy or hard at times, as well as those where it felt just right. There were also some fantastic comments on the question, ‘Who is most responsible for your learning?’ One pupil spoke about the image of a triangle, with the pupil, teacher and parent taking a side each. Another noted that adults can give you help and information but it’s the learner as an individual who decides what to do with that. A key item in our Improvement Plan is around the quality assurance of learning, teaching and assessment, and these discussions help to support our conclusions.

Ongoing activities

Every class teacher has been part of our Learning Walks and Learning Visits programme, enabling us to quality assure classroom experiences and to work together on continuous improvement in pedagogy. Our young people are an important part of this process, as we have key questions we ask them about their learning in terms of its purpose, how it links to prior or future learning, how they know they are making progress etc. Checking in with them in the moment, as they are engaging in the lesson, gives a real sense of how they feel about each lesson.

Our newly formed Eco Group has been working hard on their strategic plan, with pupils deciding that their first priority should be the development of a bee garden in one of our outdoor areas. Representatives attended our October Parent Council Meeting, where they spoke confidently about their ideas and how the community might work together to realise these.

Our growing school has meant further recruitment at the start of term, with young people involved in posts for Art and Design and Support for Learning (Literacy). They have hosted tours, answered candidate questions, and contributed to the questions that we ask on the panel. The young people always speak with such kindness and respect about our guests, and are very good at identifying how well they interact with our community.

Our key focus in the next quadrant will be around Rights Respecting Schools, as we head towards our Silver Award assessment day in February. The pupil steering group is currently planning how we can find out more about our community’s  knowledge and understanding of rights, and how these feature in the curriculum at present. 

We will also be working closely with the S4 as they help us to plan for further senior phase expansion. It’s worth remembering that recruitment to subjects such as Business Studies and Computing Science this year happened as a direct result of pupil participation in our decision making processes, and we continue to give them these opportunities to shape our offer wherever we can.