School Councils Project Update

School Councils

An update for all young people that took part in our school council research (2019/2020)

In 2019 and 2020 we consulted with young people and teachers about how young people are listened to in secondary schools.  We wanted to know what made a good school council and what challenges exist that make it more difficult for some young people to be heard.

Young people on our Advisory Panel helped design this project and over 7000 children and young people took part in this research.  You might have taken part in the following ways:

  • taking our 2019 Right Way Education Survey;
  • at debates in our 2020 Student Ambassador events;
  • through a consultation visit from our office;
  • by sharing a case study about your school council;
  • by taking our survey for school councils.

School professionals and governors also took part in the consultation.

We planned to publish our findings at the end of March 2020.  But we didn’t publish our report because schools were focused on the pandemic.  Over the last year, we’ve been listening closely to young people and professionals about their experiences in schools, to see if there might be a good time to publish the report.  But because of the big pressures for schools over this year there hasn’t been a good time to publish.

However we plan to update our report in 2021 and to publish it this year. If you’d like to contact us with any questions about this, please e mail us.

In the meantime, you can use the toolkit that we created with young people as part of this project – Make A Difference – A Young Person’s Guide to Taking Change.

This toolkit was created in response to the priorities young people shared with us in our consultation.  It supports all young people to take positive action about the issues important to them.