TITLE OF DEVELOPING PRACTICE EXAMPLE
Building pupil voice and participation into our ways of working in Falkirk Children’s Services
built BY
Digitize Pathways in partnership with Tablet academy Scotland and Co.Lab Hub
- Good Practice Example
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CONTEXT / BACKGROUND
In spring 2021, members of the Service and School Improvement Team (SSI), Falkirk Council Children’s Services began to plan how to form a new group linking children and young people across Falkirk Council education establishments. This goal was part of Falkirk’s corporate Children’s Rights and Engagement development work and involved collaboration with partners and third sector colleagues. The planned Falkirk Children and Young People’s group (FCYPG) in Children’s Services would ensure that our pupils were empowered, heard, and could participate in decision-making processes affecting their lives and education in our local authority. This work was therefore aligned with a range of national and international policy drivers relating to pupil voice, participation and rights as enshrined by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989, UNICEF).
The UNCRC article met within this approach is:
- Article 12: The right to an opinion and for it to be taken seriously
WHAT WE DID
Officers from our SSI team engaged with colleagues from primary and secondary schools to explore how a meeting of many pupils across the authority could happen. The continuation of restrictions relating to the Covid 19 pandemic both hindered and enabled practical arrangements for this, leading to our creation of a new Falkirk Children and Young People’s Microsoft Team. Following much work by staff, the first virtual meeting of the FCYPG happened on 25th October 2021 and involved over 300 pupils aged from primary 3 to secondary 6. There was great excitement at this first meeting about being able to see and hear children and young people from other schools across our authority. Since October there have been a further 2 whole group meetings, and 3 school-specific meetings, as well as the necessary preparatory staff collaborations and communications. At the beginning of each meeting, pupils particularly enjoy taking their turn to switch on their camera, unmute, then give their loudest cheer and wildest waves to say hello to everyone.
The Team and our meetings are currently set up to enable pupils to choose between and work together on the following specific Team Channel tasks:
Channel 1: Making decisions about how the FCYPG meetings should be structured and run, and also when/how often these would take place
The UNCRC article met within this channel is:
Article 12: The right to an opinion and for it to be taken seriously
Channel 2: Planning how to make sure that the voices of our youngest learners are included in the decisions our group makes
The UNCRC article met within this channel is:
Article 12: The right to an opinion and for it to be taken seriously
Channel 3: Discussing the implications of COP 26 and what our children and young people want its legacy to be in Falkirk
The UNCRC articles met within this channel are:
Article 6: The right to life, survival and development
Article 12: The right to an opinion and for it to be taken seriously
Article 17: The right to reliable information from a variety of sources
The SDG covered within this channel are:
Goal 12: Responsible Consumption and Production
Goal 13: Climate Action
Channel 4: Making decisions about how the UNCRC and children’s rights should happen across our community
The UNCRC article met within this channel is:
Article 12: The right to an opinion and for it to be taken seriously
In addition, all articles will be covered in the pupils’ work as the focus is the UNCRC
Channel 5: Responding to consultation to make sure that important council policies include children and young people’s voices.
The UNCRC article met within this channel is:
Article 12: The right to an opinion and for it to be taken seriously
Next steps:
Our focus for the remainder of this school session will also be to progress the actions identified by the children and young people in each channel group, then establish our aims and meeting dates for 2022-2023. And hopefully be able to do some meetings in person rather than on-line due to lifting Covid restrictions.
IMPACT / OUTCOMES
The Connected Falkirk roll out is enabling increasing numbers of pupils to attend the meetings and contribute to tasks in between meetings. Primary and secondary pupils from the FCYPG have been actively surveying and consulting their fellow pupils as part of their participation, and our new Members of Scotland’s Youth Parliament introduced themselves to the FCYPG during meeting 1. As a staff team supporting the FCYPG, we are working to reduce and remove remaining logistical barriers to wider pupil participation as well as extending the number of education centres and pupils involved.
Categories
Stage focus
Tags
LA
Falkirk
CONTACT PERSON
Fiona Malcolm
