Giving pupils a voice benefits attitudes to learning and helps school improvement

Information about the school

West Park Primary School is in Nottage, near Porthcawl in Bridgend local authority.  There are 416 pupils on roll, aged from 3 to 11, including 52 nursery children who attend part-time.  There are 15 single-age classes in the school.  

The rolling average for the past three years means that about 5% of pupils are eligible for free school meals.  This is well below the national average of 18%.  Nearly all pupils are of white British ethnicity.  Very few pupils speak Welsh at home.  

The school identifies around 6% of pupils as having special educational needs.  This is much lower than the national average of 21%.  A very few pupils have a statement of special educational needs.  

Context and background to the effective or innovative practice

Over time, the school has developed a very effective approach to pupil voice and to ensuring that pupils have the skills to take responsibility and to contribute to decisions.   For many years the school has had an eco-committee and school council.  However, in September 2016, the school recognised that these groups did not act in an independent way and relied too much on teacher support.  By listening to learners, staff found that many pupils wanted to be part of these groups but did not have the opportunity to do so, as membership was often through an election process.  In addition, while pupils contributed ideas for learning through developing theme activities, they did not have the opportunity to do this as independently as they could.  The school used multiple strategies, which impacted on each other to improve pupil voice opportunities within the school, and to improve the skills the pupils needed so that they could fully benefit from the improved opportunities.

Description of nature of strategy or activity

Initially, the school set about improving the range of pupil voice groups and ensured improved opportunities for pupils to join those groups.  During this period, the school set about analysing and improving its approach to the 12 pedagogical principles in the new curriculum for Wales.  In particular, this included developing the three pedagogical principles of ‘authentic contexts for learning’, ‘encouraging pupils to take responsibility for own learning’ and ‘to use approaches that encourage problem solving, creative and critical thinking’.  The school also focused on developing the expressive arts area of learning.    Through its monitoring and listening to learners structure, it became clear to school leaders that the school improvements around the three pedagogical principles and expressive arts were having a very positive impact on the pupils’ ability to take responsibility for their learning and make decisions, and overall this transformed their attitudes to learning.

As a result, the school realised that, to have good pupil voice, pupils must have:

• good attitudes to learning  
• good independent learning skills
• good leadership skills   

In turn, the school focused on ensuring that an effective and engaging curriculum supported these three aspects effectively. 

Developing good attitudes to learning through an effective curriculum:

The school uses a theme based approach to the curriculum, ensuring the development of pupils’ literacy, numeracy, ICT and thinking skills.  From January 2017, the school placed the four core purposes of the new curriculum at the core of its themes.  Each theme idea was designed and ways of developing each of the core purposes through the theme were specifically planned by teachers working in teams.  The school found that by approaching the development of themes in this way it promoted the principle of ‘authentic contexts for learning’ and for encouraging pupils’ problem solving, critical and creative thinking.  As a result, the school was able to re-develop its themes to become more emotive and issue based, with a real purpose for learning.

Pupils contribute to ‘what and how’ they learn using activity starters at the beginning of a theme and throughout the theme.  For example, after a hook into the theme they use the words ‘debate, compare, investigate, analyse, present, examine, prepare’ to develop activities that lead to an end point of the theme.  All of the pupils study the same theme to enable co-operative thinking and improving the purpose for learning.  For example, the theme of the Second World War became ‘Peace and Conflict’, in order to look at much wider and current real world issues than the specific theme of the Second World War.  Pupils began by learning and immersing themselves in a particular European country, with each cohort choosing a different country.  Following this, an event would happen causing the cohort countries to be in conflict with each other.  Pupils discussed their experiences of conflict, such as disagreements with friends, and looked at the causes of conflicts and the feelings that they evoke, investigating the ways that conflict can be overcome and applying their own experience.  They looked back in history to see if they could learn how people survived conflict in the past, leading them to investigate the Home Front during the World Wars.  They investigated the impact of conflict, through finding out about the lives of modern day refugees and comparing this to evacuees during the Second World War.  They debated issues such as ‘do we have a duty to help refugees both now and back in the Second World War – why / why not?’  Pupils proposed various ideas to promote peace, finally deciding to hold a PEACE Olympics.

In another theme, ‘Incredible Oceans’, pupils investigated plastic pollution and its impact, and debated and discussed issues of whether we have a responsibility to keep the oceans clean – why?  or why not?  They designed ways to clean the oceans and ways to prevent plastic pollution.  They wrote to the council and other local groups and organised a protest march through the local town to promote awareness.

The pupils’ ideas for learning are taken on board and pupils are free to take the learning in their own way.  This has transformed attitudes to learning and nearly every pupil is highly engaged in their learning.  The nature of the themes and the build to an end point have had the impact of making pupils feel that they have a voice; they believe that their voice matters and that they can make a difference.  As a result, nearly all pupils are keen to be part of pupil voice groups and contribute to school life.

The school has also improved its provision for expressive arts, which has a strong impact on pupils’ confidence to decide what and how to learn and how to show their learning.  An afternoon a week in Years 4, 5 and 6 was devoted to teaching the skills of expressive arts.  The specific skills of music, art, performance, digital media and dance were taught in six week blocks, through the context of theme as the whole key stage studies at the same theme.  Pupils decided the order they would learn the skills in and rotated through each skill for a six week block, completing all the blocks by the end of the year.  The pupils worked in vertical groups across the year groups.  This approach was very successful in improving pupils’ expressive art skills and their ability to apply these skills across the curriculum in a very effective way.   Staff had already engaged in research into the pedagogy of what makes good independent learning.  This meant that all staff across the school had a common approach, structure and language for independent learning.   This common understanding by staff, combined with the pupils’ more developed expressive art skills, further improved their positive attitudes to learning as they were able to develop learning fully in their own way, produce their own outcomes and know that all types of learning outcomes were valued. 

This combination of improving themes, improving independent learning skills and ensuring good quality expressive arts resulted in pupils being more engaged in their learning, improving attitudes to learning and in turn their desire to be involved in decision-making – to gain the skills needed to be involved and their belief that they could make a difference.  This in turn improved the ability of the pupil voice groups to function in an independent way and to be far more self-driven. 

What impact has this work had on provision and learners’ standards?

Nearly all pupils, regardless of ability, have very good attitudes to learning and are highly engaged in their learning, which has a positive impact on standards and progress.  Pupils are keen to learn and behaviour in class is very good as a result.  Standards of work across the school are good and pupils make good progress from their starting points.  The pupil voice groups at the school are very effective, play an active role in the life of the school and make a good contribution to decisions made.   

How have you shared your good practice?

Effective practices have been shared across the school through staff working in teams to develop themes, co-coaching and teams of teachers undertaking listening to learner activities.

The school has shared pupil voice good practice at the Bridgend Festival of Learning in 2018 and 2019.

Good practice in pupil voice has been shared and developed as part of the school cluster working.