Lib Ed - reviews

Inspiring Schools:
Taking up the Challenge of Pupil Participation

Professor Lynn Davies, Dr Christopher Williams and Hiromi Yamashita with Ko Man-Hing, Aubrey

available from www.carnegie-youth.org.uk or www.esmeefairbairn.org.uk

 

Inspiring Schools is a set of three publications, subtitled Impacts and Outcomes , A Literature Review and Case Studies for Change . They were written by a team from Birmingham University and commissioned by the Carnegie Young People Initiative and the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.

The overall tone is indeed inspiring and some of the examples of participation are astonishing and delightful, but the literature review (published on the web at www.carnegie-youth.org.uk) reveals how small the changes are in many schools. At a specialist school for citizenship, for instance, the most important thing that has happened is that a GCSE Citizenship Studies course has been introduced, and all students in Years 10 and 11 are now given a weekly one-hour Citizenship Studies lesson.

There are also problems of teacher attitudes and pupil fears. Some teachers see pupil participation as an interruption of a school's real purpose, which is considered to be teaching, learning and enabling children to gain qualifications. Others cherish their authority and believe that giving children a say would undermine it. Children are aware of this; one study of three schools establishing councils for the first time reports that students from all three schools expected to run into trouble with the teaching staff or the management.

Even in a school with no staff room, shared toilets, first names and an emphasis on "fraternity" between staff and students, researchers found that dissent was suppressed, and there was passivity rather than truly participatory democracy.

Case Studies for Change, the third part of the study , is a report on seven different schools that have made changes. The first is The Four Dwellings High School, a specialist science college in Birmingham, which has a school council which meets twice a term, "teaching and learning discussion groups" which also meet twice a term, and Youth Marshalls, who seem to be an updated version of prefects, trained in mediation techniques. The minutes of a year 8 discussion group include the percentage of lessons perceived as interesting by each of the twelve students present: two put it at 5%, and no one put it at higher than 50%. There were unfortunately no suggestions as to how lessons could be made more interesting, but plenty of ideas about improving classroom behaviour by refining the system of punishments and rewards.

St. Joseph's RC Comprehensive School in South Tyneside, on the other hand, has welcomed student participation to the extent of allowing a survey of homework which revealed that too much homework was set, teachers did not stick to the official homework timetable and often did not mark homework at all, and that the homework set was often irrelevant. This review was welcomed and the school has changed its homework policies.

Ashley School is a community special school near Liverpool, with 124 students on roll, all with statements of Special Educational Needs, including pupils with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties, ADHD and other disorders. All pupils are involved in school decision-making, regardless of their ability, and they enjoy this and do not need any systems of rewards and punishments. Each form has a weekly meeting, which sends a representative to the School Council. Most students are also members of one of the school committees, which meet with a teaching assistant as secretary and one member of staff present. One of the committees deals with the actual school curriculum, but the most unusual feature of all is a dedicated meeting room with hi-tech screens and closed circuit cameras enabling all the school to watch. The room is never used by adults, although staff may occasionally be invited in.

The book contains descriptions of many other ways of empowering students or involving them in community activities outside their schools. Most could well be replicated elsewhere.

Impacts and Outcomes is an assessment of what emerged from the seven case studies and the literature review. It is extremely positive, and is given more weight by the fact that the report team did not start with the assumption that all pupil participation would necessarily be beneficial. In their final overview they state, "We have not come across a single study where a school or college has gone back on student involvement and actively decided that it is not wanted. The worst that happens is that some of it dies because an enthusiastic teacher leaves or a school council is not seen as particularly effective. Mostly, however participation in decision-making starts a process going which starts to generate a chain of benefits." Among these benefits are happiness, self-esteem, communication skills and a better staff-student relationship. Although there is no definite link between participation and improved academic standards, the report states unequivocally that nowhere does academic achievement suffer as a result of participatory activities. It avoids pointing out that happiness, self-esteem and so on are more important than A stars in GCSE, but gives examples of schools where you can have both.

Inspiring Schools is a cunningly ambiguous title. At first it seems merely to suggest that the report is describing schools that are inspiring in themselves, but by the time you have finished it, it seems to have set itself the task of inspiring other schools to imitate them. However, they do not underestimate the difficulty of doing so.

"One sad reflection from reading many of the studies," they say, "is how participation is actually not routine in so many schools, how these 'outcomes' do not derive from normal school practice. What sort of school is it when the school council proudly announce that thanks to their work, pupils are now allowed to wear hats and jumpers in the playground? Why is it that pupils say that from some participatory initiative they now have gained confidence in speaking? What in their schooling had eroded or at least not provided that confidence before? Why is it so novel for a pupil to tell a teacher about how their teaching impacts on them, when pupils have up to 13 years of being on the receiving end and have a mass of cumulative experience? Why is it only in community work or mini-enterprises that pupils say they learn 'teamwork', when, again, they have been in groups of 30 all their school lives? The small 'victories' from participatory activities point up how far we have to go before formal schooling truly meets the needs of children and young people."

Nevertheless, the small victories described in these books may well inspire other schools to try similar methods, and their carefully documented success is a welcome resource for anyone who is trying to argue for their introduction.

Summerhill and A.S.Neill edited by Mark Vaughan with contributions by Zoë Neill Readhead, Tim Brighouse and Ian Stronach Open University Press, ISBN-10: 0 335 21913 6 (paperback) or 0335 21914 4 (hardback)

For those who know Summerhill well, there is much in this book that is already familiar, but for newcomers it is a splendid introduction, inevitably provocative and entertaining where it quotes Neill himself and elsewhere more soberly demonstrative of the success of his school.

It starts with a short essay by Tim Brighouse, describing the influence Summerhill has already had on the state school system in Britain and suggesting that with the current emphasis on student voice it might have an even greater effect. He wonders, though, whether there are developments in our age which would have caused Neill to modify his approach.

The next section, which at sixty pages is more than one third of the whole book, is the first chapter of Neill's own Summerhill , first published in 1962, when he was eighty-four. This is where strangers to the system get their surprises, and old hands welcome the familiar dicta, such as "I would rather see a school produce a happy street cleaner than a neurotic scholar," "We had one main idea: to make the school fit the child – instead of making the child fit the school," and "The bestowal of freedom is the bestowal of love. And only love can save the world."

Neill's views are supported with many anecdotes. Some of them, particularly the ones about the instant therapeutic effects of his own interventions, seem at first sight too good to be true, but perhaps we should believe them. John Burningham, the illustrator of children's books, has elsewhere written about the instant effect that Neill had on him when he had been stealing regularly from the school larder. All Neill did was to remark, from behind the newspaper he was reading when the young Burningham dropped in one day, "Some bugger has got the key to the store room, Brum. You wouldn't happen to know who that is would you?" Burningham says that he immediately went and fetched the key and never stole again. It is a pity that the book does not include more accounts like this from the children who were affected by Neill's unusual methods.

The next section of the book, though, is actually by an ex-pupil – Zoe Neill Readhead, Neill's daughter and the current head of the school. Her own children also attended the school, and she has two grandchildren there now, so she has seen it from many different angles. She describes her relationship with her father, and how having been a pupil gives her a completely different slant on her role as head, how she sometimes wishes she could tell him, "Actually Neill, you were wrong about such and such," and how she longed for his support when Channel 4 showed its dishonest and destructive film about the school.

She tells how Summerhill no longer so often receives children who have been traumatised by their experiences at the hands of adults, and has now become a place which teaches some over-indulged children about how to behave and how to stick to rules. She emphasises the absolute practicality of the school, and says, for instance, "We just get on and live our lives in a simple, basic and somehow ancient way."

Ian Stronach's analysis of the 1999 OFSTED report follows, with his account of the resulting independent inspections and court case. The extent of malice and duplicity that he exposes, in careful academic style, is astonishing, and makes for exciting reading. He also gives the solid evidence of the success of the school that the DfES was so determined to suppress. This success extends even to exam results, which were found by the independent inquiry to be "better than the national average, despite the intake being largely non-UK, and comprising higher than average numbers of special needs pupils and indeed those with school phobias of one sort or another."

Next come some questions and answers taken from Neill's Summerhill , presumably adapted from real discussions after public talks. Neill's replies sometimes have a period flavour, but many are still relevant, cutting and witty. "Why does my small son tell so many lies?" asks one parent. "Possibly," replies Neill, "in imitation of his parents."

The book finishes with some more up-to-date questions about things like drugs, the internet and mobile phones, which are effectively answered by Zoë, and a brief account of the A.S. Neill Summerhill Trust, the aims of which are to spread Neill's ideals and to support pupils at Summerhill who could not otherwise afford to attend.

So many people who have read Neill's books, says Zoe, say that they not only enjoyed them, but "it changed their lives." If you haven't read anything about Neill and Summerhill before, this book may change yours.

Shattered Lives : Camila Batmanghelidjh Jessica Kingsley, £13.99: ISBN 1 843 10 4342

Camila Batmanghelidjh is the founder of Kids Company, the organisation which works with the London children who the rest of us prefer to despise, evict, punish or ignore – hoodies, children who have attempted suicide, children who steal in order to eat, children whose parents have forced them into prostitution to feed their own drug habit, children who carry weapons, children who have never been to school, children who fight back against the society that has so brutalised them. An abstract list like this removes some of the horror. When you read, for instance, of the twelve-year-old girl caring for three younger siblings who was forced by her mother to "suck dicks for money" and then insulted as a whore, it comes alive.

The backbone of the book is a number of letters Batmanghelidjh has written to particular children, describing their lives and praising them for their courage and determination to survive in a world of terror and despair. The first letter starts like this: "Dear Chardonnay [not her real name], I first came across you when you lay flat on your belly, relentlessly slamming your face into the pavement. I sat beside you, putting my hands between your forehead and the concrete, cushioning you against the blows." And after that the revelations get worse and worse.

Batmanghelidjh asked the children she wrote to to choose their own pseudonyms, and she read them the letters she had written to have their comments and corrections and permission for publication. One child had died before there was time.

These narratives are enclosed by descriptions of other similar behaviour, passages of psychological explanation and practical advice for people who find themselves in a position to help. It is always essential, she says, to support the tiny amount of self-esteem that these children somehow manage to retain. Criticism and punishment can only make things worse. A theme that runs through the book is Batmanghelidjh's rage at the sometimes disgraceful responses of the social services, the care homes and the police.

The book includes so many strong ideas that it is impossible to do it justice in a short review. This is one of Batmanghelidjh's attempts to sum it up herself in her conclusion:

As usual, childlike wisdom has intelligence. These young people [to whom she wrote the letters] courageously took the first step in truth telling. They share with you their life stories so that your two-dimensional picture can acquire more depth. No child is born a criminal or a killer – something happens to generate hate in them.

And later she draws attention to the way professionals deliberately hold back from affective relationships with their clients:

We are afraid when others show care, when they stand up for something valuable. We mistake homogeny for efficiency and force our services to lose the brilliant contribution of those who are kind. The committed individual is perceived as too involved, as if feeling is somehow an indication of incompetence, of inferiority, or weakness.

Our structures are failing children because we are scared of love.

"First and foremost and all the time, " wrote David Wills fifty years ago in The Barns Experiment , "the children must feel themselves to be loved." It is good to see the people who mock this statement as sentimental once more corrected by someone who can prove its truth from her own experience.

 

 

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