Children and Young People

Principles

A core principle of Creative Partnerships work is that pupil voice is genuinely valued. Children and young people should be placed at the heart of the decisionmaking process and their leadership capacities developed. We believe that Creative Partnerships programmes are most effective when pupils play a key role in leading them, shaping them, and taking responsibility for their own learning.

It is commonly agreed that strong and effective pupil voice is a central feature of successful schools. Schools involved in Creative Partnerships programmes usually have an excellent track record in developing mechanisms to ensure that children and young people develop the capacity to play an active leadership role in the life of the school.

Practicalities

Creative Partnerships programme management systems are designed to maximise the development of pupil voice throughout the planning, delivery, evaluation and celebration of project activity. They do this in the following ways:
• Involving pupils in decisions as early as possible about the scope and structure of the programme and projects at the planning stage is a requirement set out in programme and project planning forms
• During projects, end-of-session record sheets include the requirement to consult pupils about the session and the ongoing progress of the project
• Throughout projects, pupils are encouraged to document the activity, their experience and their learning, using whatever media they find appropriate. These rich records of experience become an important resource for pupils to reflect on their own learning, deepening and extending that learning in the process
• The use of the National Evaluation Framework is structured around the principle that pupils comment on their own learning as well as the learning of their teachers and the creative practitioners working with them. They also comment on the quality of project delivery and on the distance travelled as a result of the project. When final judgements are made about the overall quality and impact of projects, pupils’ views are given equal status to the views of teachers and creative practitioners. The three points of view are triangulated to achieve a full picture of
project outcomes
• When Creative Partnerships projects are reported, pupils’ opinions should be a key voice within those reports. Pupils are encouraged to act as advocates for the school, delivering presentations about project activity and representing the school at conferences, seminars and networking events as appropriate to their age and ability School councils, creative councils and young people’s advisory groups

Schools develop a range of mechanisms to help pupils develop the capacity to take leadership and decision-making roles. Creative Partnerships seeks to build on established practice rather than imposing a particular approach. Partner schools are expected to establish appropriate systems to ensure that pupils have a genuine role in shaping and leading the Creative Partnerships programme, and that these systems are as inclusive as possible. Some schools have found that establishing a separate young people’s advisory group makes a positive contribution to developing pupil voice in the school and in ensuring that young people’s choices are reflected in the shape and content of the programme. Young people involved in groups of this nature develop essential leadership skills. They commonly act as ambassadors for the programme, visiting other schools, representing the school at conferences and other events, and playing an active role in national networks of young people.

Young people selecting practitioners

A relatively simple method of developing young people’s ownership of the programme is to involve them in the selection of the creative practitioners. Schools that have done this have found that it leads to many benefits, including:

• young people realise they need to develop skills in order to recruit practitioners fairly, and they engage positively in acquiring those skills
• young people develop the capacity to work collaboratively and cooperatively
• young people feel greater engagement as active stakeholders. This leads to much higher levels of participation in the programme.

Other ways of developing young people as decision makers and leaders The National Youth Agency has developed a set of standards for the active involvement of children and young people called ‘Hear by Right’. These standards will help schools to establish the appropriate values, strategies, structures, systems, staffing arrangements, skills and knowledge to enable pupils to play an active role in leadership and decision making in the school. For further information on Hear by Right, visit: hbr.nya.org.uk