Evaluating Your School Council

School Councils UK Activity Guide

04 Evaluating Your School Council

School Councils UK 108-110 Camden High Street, London NW1 0LU 0845 456 9428 [email protected] www.schoolcouncils.org

What is evaluation? The dictionary defines ‘evaluation’ as; “Judging or calculating the quality, importance, amount or value of something.” However, for evaluating your school council you should have less of a focus on the judging part and more focus on assessing how well things are going and deciding what needs to be done to improve it. The two questions you should be seeking to answer are

• •

How effective is the school council? What can be done to make it better?

Ask each council member to complete a questionnaire (see appendix 1 for a sample), or help the Chair and Vice-chair to design one of your own. The aim of the questionnaire should be to help the team think about what they are doing well and what they could be doing better. The questionnaire can be answered anonymously if it is felt that the pupils will be able to be more open. Even if the results come back with almost all positive responses that does not necessarily mean that the council doesn’t need to improve. This is just the view of the councillors. The rest of the school might think differently.

2). School wide evaluation Why bother with evaluation? Quite simply, if you don’t evaluate all aspects of the school council you won’t know how effective it is being. You, and probably many others, have put a lot of hard work and time into your school council; if you want to see it develop and flourish you will need to find out what is working well and what needs to be improved upon.

How do we evaluate our school council? As you might expect it is vital that the evaluation is a pupil-led project. What you might like to do is carry out a small assessment amongst the school council and decide if further evaluation of any particular area is needed. Although it is also very important to observe the work of the school council and to talk to everyone about how they feel it is going, this kind of assessment will prove very difficult to calculate. Simple questionnaires are a very effective way of getting a clear and concise response from all members of the school. The process can be broken down into two stages:

1). Internal Evaluation How does the school council itself think it is doing?

It is a good idea to form a subcommittee from the school council to take responsibility for this. Design a easy to answer, 1-page questionnaire, which will ask all members of the school, that’s pupils, teachers, senior management and non-teaching staff, to let you know what they think about the school council, (see appendix 2 for an example). You will of course have to adapt it to be more appropriate to your school council and its work Try and get teachers to agree to a 5 – 10 minute session in each class, facilitated by the class representatives, this way you can be sure of getting lots filled in and returned. When developing your own questionnaire for both the internal and school-wide evaluation you will need to think about which categories to include, you may also feel that you need separate questionnaires for staff and pupils. Areas that you might want your questions to cover include:

• • • • •

School council image and profile Achievements of the school council Election process Representation of pupils Meeting needs of pupils

© School Councils UK 2005. Please feel free to reproduce this resource with acknowledgement (non-commercial use only)

School Councils UK Activity Guide School Councils UK 108-110 Camden High Street, London NW1 0LU 0845 456 9428 [email protected] www.schoolcouncils.org

• • •

Relationship between school council and adults (i.e. teachers, senior managers, parents, governors and non-teaching staff) Feedback of council activities to pupils Involvement of all pupils in council activities

Remember: i). Keep the form simple and fun, with tick boxes or similar ii). Provide space for further comments, but keep free text areas to a minimum iii). Provide a set time for filling in the forms iv). Make sure they are all returned

Or Maybe…: Ask each form group to answer one or two questions each, this way you get a general idea of how things are going but you’re not asking everyone to fill in a long and time consuming form. See appendix 3 for an example of how one of these might look.

Now what do I do with all the information? So now you have all your questionnaires back, you need to collate the answers into a manageable way to read them. There are a number of ways to do this, but below is one of the simplest. For each question attribute a score to each answer, e.g. A = 1, B =2, C = 3, (3 being the best). You can then add up how many points you got for each and what the maximum score, (if everyone gave you a 3), would be. e.g. The first question was answered by 300 pupils, and the highest possible score they could give was 3, then your maximum possible score for question 1 is 300 x 3 = 900. If you scored 250, you might think this is an area that the council needs to work on. If however you got 750, well that is pretty good score and the council should be proud of itself.

Break down the scores into categories, e.g. 0 – 300 (need to improve), 301 – 600 (good, but might need some thought), 601 – 900 (excellent work, keep it up) Produce a document with all the results and any other comments that people have made about each area of work. Once you have done this you will be able to see at a glance which areas need improving and which areas of work the school council is doing very well.

Now what? Now it’s time for the school council to assess the results and have a meeting specifically for addressing any issues that have been raised during the school-wide evaluation. The chair should lead the meeting, going through each point, praising when necessary and discussing how to improve upon each area that should have scored better. You might find a number of temporary subcommittees being formed to deal with each area of work. It is crucial that the school council is not made to feel attacked or vulnerable by the feedback. Remember they asked for opinions with the aim of finding out what they can improve upon. The link teacher and the chair need to continually reassure and praise the councillors for the good work that they have carried out. You should publicise your findings throughout the school, on notice boards, newsletters and websites, along with any changes that you promise to make. This kind of evaluation should be carried out regularly in order that the school council is continually aware of their progress and achievements, whilst ensuring they are meeting the needs of the pupils.

© School Councils UK 2005. Please feel free to reproduce this resource with acknowledgement (non-commercial use only)

School Councils UK Training

School Council Self-Evaluation The School Council ƒ

The school council meets regularly and frequently enough

Agree strongly

Agree

Disagree

to be effective. ƒ

The council is clear about the issues it can deal with.

Agree strongly

Agree

Disagree

ƒ

Council members respect and listen to each other.

Agree strongly

Agree

Disagree

ƒ

Our school council image in the school is very positive.

Agree strongly

Agree

Disagree

School Council Activities ƒ

The activities of the school council matter to the rest of the students and teachers

Agree strongly

Agree

Disagree.

ƒ

The school council often organises successful projects and activities.

Agree strongly

Agree

Disagree

ƒ

The school council has enough money to do what it wants.

Agree strongly

Agree

Disagree

Class Representatives ƒ

Class representatives are democratically elected.

Agree strongly

Agree

Disagree

ƒ

Class representatives have been trained in school council skills

Agree strongly

Agree

Disagree

ƒ

The is good communication between council members and classes.

Agree strongly

Agree

Disagree

Relationship between the school council and the staff ƒ

The staff and the headteacher support the council’s regular activities.

Agree strongly

Agree

Disagree

ƒ

The councils has a supportive and effective link teacher.

Agree strongly

Agree

Disagree

ƒ

The school council can always talk to the headteacher or deputy.

Agree strongly

Agree

Disagree

If you get any questions that have a lot of ‘Disagrees’ or even ‘Agrees’ you might want to think about how the school council can turn them into an ‘Agree strongly’ for the next time you self-evaluate.

School Councils UK, 3rd Floor 108-110 Camden High Street, London NW1 0LU Tel 0845 456 9428 Fax 0845 456 9429 Email [email protected] Web www.schoolcouncils.org

School Councils UK Training

School Council Questionnaire

Year Group of Pupil

Part 1: What do you know about the school council? (Circle answers) 1.

Did you know that there is a school council at this school?

No

Yes

2.

Do you know what the school council is for?

No

Sort of

Yes

3.

Do you know the names of your class/form representatives?

No

Sort of

Yes

4.

Do you know how you could make a suggestion to the school council?

No

Sort of

Yes

Part 2: How effective is our school council? 5.

Do you feel well informed about what the school council is doing?

No

Sort of

Yes

6.

Do you think the school council listens to other pupils?

No

Sort of

Yes

7.

Do you think the school council is helping to make the school better?

No

Sort of

Yes

Part 3: What should our school council be doing? The following are things that our school council are committed to doing. Please give each one a mark of between 1 and 3 depending on how well you think they are doing; 1 = Poor, 2 = OK, 3 = Excellent a)

Improve communication between pupils and teachers

1

2

3

b)

Improve facilities outside school for young people (e.g. transport, leisure)

1

2

3

c)

Improve school discipline and behaviour

1

2

3

d)

Improve school facilities e.g. playground

1

2

3

e)

Improve choice and value of school food

1

2

3

f)

Improve teaching and lessons

1

2

3

g)

Manage services for students (e.g. tuck shop)

1

2

3

h)

Organise extra-curricular activities (sport, discos, etc.)

1

2

3

i)

Raise awareness of social issues (e.g. racism, drugs, environment)

1

2

3

j)

Fund raise money for charities and the schools

1

2

3

Part 4: How can the school council improve? We want pupils to find out about what the school council is doing. Please give each of the following ideas a mark of between 1 and 3, 1 = bad idea, 2 = OK idea, 3 = very good idea a)

Weekly class meetings for all pupils to discuss issues

1

2

3

b)

Announcements in assembly about the school council

1

2

3

c)

School Council newsletter

1

2

3

d)

School Council Website and email updates

1

2

3

e)

Noticeboard with news about the school council

1

2

3

Part 5: Any other comments? Is there anything you would like to say about the school council or the school in general? Your comments will be anonymous (continue on reverse)

Thank you very much for your time!

School Councils UK, 3rd Floor 108-110 Camden High Street, London NW1 0LU Tel 0845 456 9428 Fax 0845 456 9429 Email [email protected] Web www.schoolcouncils.org

School Councils UK Training

Example of a single issue Questionnaire

ELECTIONS 1

Elections are held across the whole school

☺

2

Form elections are free and fair

☺

3

Everyone gets a vote

☺

4

Ballots are secret

☺

5

Anyone can stand for School Council

☺

6

Councillors are elected because they will do a good job

☺

7

I vote for the person I think will be best for the job (not just for friends)

☺

8

The elections are taken seriously by the whole school

☺

9

Everyone in school is aware when elections are taking place

☺

10

Information and publicity about the elections are clearly displayed around the school for everyone to see

☺

11

Staff do not try to influence how I vote

☺

12

I can vote for who I want

☺

School Councils UK, 3rd Floor 108-110 Camden High Street, London NW1 0LU Tel 0845 456 9428 Fax 0845 456 9429 Email [email protected] Web www.schoolcouncils.org