Student Commission Newsletter - Summer 2017

Student

Commission Summer 2017

Introduction by Sir Dan Moynihan

World Class Learning

In December 2016, the Harris Student Commission on Learning was re-launched with the intention of exploring World Class Learning.

Based at Harris Westminster, the re-launch was hugely successful, with students and teachers from all secondary academies, coming together, to develop a shared vision for World Class Learning.

Students and teachers met with and experienced a variety of workshops from educational thinkers like David Didau, Phil Badham, Stephen Heppell and many others.

At the end of the session, the students and their teachers were ‘commissioned’ to investigate and research what World Class Learning would look like in their academies.

This magazine reflects some of the work that they have done over the course of the last six months; look out for their recommendations as we continue to work together to strive for truly World Class Learning across the Harris Federation.

In December 2016, having been energised by a day of working with a series of industry experts, pupils from across our Federation left Harris Westminster with one question at the forefront of their minds: What makes World-class learning?

Their mission was simple: to lead an action-research project to discover how, from the perspective of pupils, the quality of teaching and learning could be further improved in their academies.

Following six months of initiatives, surveys, interviews, academic reading, data analysis and presentations the Student Commission reconvened at Harris Bermondsey in June 2017 to share the findings of their research projects.

In an invigorating day, expertly compered by Mikhayla-Jae Caesar (HAB), our students debated the ideas that leapt out of their work and listened intently to the conclusions each group of students had drawn.

The outcomes of this debate, this research and this collaboration are now presented to you as the recommendations from the 2017 Student Commission.

A Commission that continues the legacy of the 2008 Student Commission by placing the young people who “receive” learning at the heart of defining what makes World-class learning.

This contribution to school improvement comes directly to you from the young people you teach every day. We hope you enjoy reading it and are inspired by it.

David Astin and Michael Williams

To improve challenge in classrooms throughout the Harris Federation by researching teacher and student opinions on Challenge in the Classroom.

Developing a hunch To provide an overview of opinion in our academy our students distributed questionnaires to both students and teachers. The two questionnaires were similar and encouraged participants to reflect on the strengths, weaknesses, barriers and opportunities that they felt current Challenge activities provide. Our sample comprised a total of twenty-five randomly selected teachers alongside twenty students who were more systematically selected through the use of the More Able register.

Observations from the research The following observations were noted: • Challenge plays a vital part in the teaching and learning process at Harris Battersea • Challenge is playing a positive role in the way that lessons are devised and helps create a sense of deeper learning amongst the students • Challenge is an organic part of a lesson, which develops according to need Recommendations: • Challenge tasks need to be “fit for purpose” and should be differentiated according to the ability and aspiration of each student • Tasks should promote critical thinking and problem solving, developing a deeper sense of understanding around the project • Teachers should be encouraged to have the opportunity to share best practice and to peer-assess teachers in different subjects, so that new ideas and repertoires can be developed • Challenge tasks need to have an element of excitement in them; teachers should develop a mind-set of using Challenge tasks as a way to enable students to develop, rather than just as simply an add-on task

At Harris Beckenham, our student commissioners focussed on the exploring the question: “What makes teaching and learning outstanding?”

Forming five distinct research groups they deepened their understanding of five areas of pedagogy: mastery, engagement, feedback, academic rigour and meta-cognition.

Their research and actions drew upon qualitative and quantitative data, teacher’s feedback and online publications. Over the course of the project they conducted targeted lesson observations, followed up by interviewing teachers and subsequently canvassed students to ensure their research would have an impact. Our commissioners learnt the value of organisation and presentation skills, as they prepared to present their findings to the Principal and other members of the leadership team.

In response to the project Subject Coordinators presented their plans for Innovations days to our Commissioners as a way of opening a positive dialogue to improve student engagement in the activities offered. This was a powerful experience for all involved.

Further outcomes of the project included Commissioners aiming to improve the effectiveness of feedback and by launching the “feedback buddies” which sought to maximise the impact of the “feedforward” process in class. Student evaluations were also collated after each coplanned mastery session with analysis completed to suggest ways forward.

Finally, the Commissioners’ mastery drive was based on embedding a thirst for learning amongst students; they focussed on enhancing the use of partner talk across a wider range of subjects, working directly with staff to develop and assess its impact on student engagement. Next they are looking to further refine our mastery approach to planning at the academy level.

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Student Commission | Summer 2017

The commission has brought students and teachers together in a way that has had a phenomenal impact on engagement in learning and shifted the dynamic in the traditional student-teacher relationship.

Surveys were undertaken of a random selection of Year 8–10 girls to provide a wide sample of the school and a random selection of teachers in order to understand their beliefs about the provision of feedback, particularly as there were different approaches in different subjects. Subsequently, in preparation for the final presentation we worked alongside the Senior Leadership Team, to practise, and ironically, to gain their feedback on it!

At HAB, the Student Commission worked together to research the effect of a teacher’s feedback to students. The team put together research materials for both students and teachers in order to find out about their experiences of the process used for giving students feedback and the impact it has on students’ learning. Previously, the school

has used work scrutiny to monitor the quality of marking by teachers for students and this continues, but many students told us ways they feel feedback could be altered to support more progression in their work. As such, the team split into different research groups and used methods undertaken in international studies about feedback.

At Harris Girls’ Academy Bromley, the Student Commission have been researching the ways in which teachers deliver feedback to students on their work.

This area of research was chosen because of its capacity to have a significant impact on marking and, therefore, its unique ability to positively affect the progress that every student makes.

Finally, this was a powerful experience that brought us all together. It was well led superbly by Miss Newell and it made us realise how integral feedback is for our own benefits and success within our education. We concluded that feedback is effective at HAB, although it needs to be slightly altered to ensure that all students engage with the feedback given to them.

Using both quantitative and qualitative research methods, students undertook the research project over a period of weeks. By using surveys and interviews, across the various year groups, students sought to gather data that was representative of the student population.

The results revealed that students feel that feedback is important and necessary; understand its value and have strong beliefs that it can impact their progress positively. Students recommended ways to ensure that teachers consistently gave feedback which was tailored to their individual needs.

Although Feedback at Harris Girls’ Academy Bromley is both summative and formative, students chose to focus on formative marking, specifically investigating the efficacy of the Academy’s formative marking method of ‘Over To You’ stickers which were designed with the intention of placing students at the centre of the dialogue between students and teachers. The students saw formative marking as more important because of its frequency and visibility in books.

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Student Commission and the Mayor of London Ambassador Programme The programme helped students plan an active citizenship campaign, further their curricular learning and develop life skills for success.

The students have set up an Interhouse competition for tutor groups to design a resource based on the topics with the winners being used for whole academy tutor time.

We look forward to launching the first of these student planned and delivered sessions in the summer term.

The first workshop in February inspired students to pick 5 current issues that they felt were important to them: Crime

Bullying

Equality

Youth Unemployment

Discrimination They were able to debate and discuss why they felt these were current issues they wanted to focus on. The difficult part was deciding what they wanted to do about these issues. They decided to embark on an academy wide community campaign to spread the word about the issues stated.

Our Student Commissioners meet weekly to discuss findings from our research and to contemplate what we think it proves.

As a result we plan strategies which we think will be more effective for student engagement. For this project we were primarily interested in changing mind-sets as we felt it was an interesting challenge, though we recognised that it was probably the most difficult. We decided on three focuses for the research: 1. Whether a competitive or cooperative method of teaching encouraged better student engagement 2. Whether praising effort rather than achievement would be more effective (which would involve changing the ‘Green Sticker’ feedback forms that we use) 3. Whether changing targets as per assessment cycle rather than a fixed target from year 7 would be more motivating The research that we have carried out has included: 8 lesson observations; involvement in the school’s mentoring programme; revision and restyling of a new green sticker

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Student Commission | Summer 2017

(where focus on effort is more prominent) and the conducting interviews of staff and students.

We have disseminated our results to Heads of Departments and the Teaching and Learning Team who are re-evaluating their SOWs in the light of our research.

Following consultation undertaken with the staff members of the Teaching and Learning team our Student Commissioners developed the idea of “Student Inspector focused learning walks”.

Subsequently, the idea was approved by the School Parliament and this programme will be launched during the second half of the summer term once the lead Student Inspectors have completed their training. As in all inspections, a standardisation process will take place and this will include students from all years and will be jointly chaired by a Senior Lead Practitioner and a Student Inspector.

When the programme begins students will complete focused learning walks with a Senior Lead Practitioner where they will discuss what they have seen and break this

down into how this allows students to learn. The students will then be encouraged to give practical examples of what next steps need to be taken to further improve the learning experience at HACH. The Teaching and Learning team are keen to take into consideration both how students believe they learn and what they believe helps them most engage and make good progress. The Student Inspectors will then formulate an action plan in readiness for September that will form part of the Teaching and Learning section of the Academy Improvement Plan.

How do our teachers know we are learning?

Through a range of research, observation and discussion tasks our Student Commission aimed to answer the question: “How do our teachers know we are learning?”

Embarking on this question we felt it lay at the heart of the working relationship between teachers and pupils and that if we could effectively answer this question, we would have something significant to show for our research which would be instructive to both teachers and pupils.

taking place, we found that generally learning was more effectively measured.

However, we have uncovered that progress can be most effectively measured by teachers when pupils take responsibility for demonstrating their learning, which we saw many examples of. This often stems from the amount of resilience pupils are demonstrating. Our next stage is to present our findings to students in faculty assemblies to illustrate how their behaviours in lessons can alter their learning outcomes.

One of the major conclusions of our research was that many of the most commonly used practices by teachers to find out what students have learnt, such as hands up, are not effective measures for all students. In fact, we found that few methods were effective for all students but a differentiated approach works best of all. We have also found a range of methods to assess learning are in use throughout our academy and noticed how our teachers were actively trialling innovative ways to uncover what we’re learning. Where this experimentation was

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The Student Commission of Harris Academy Greenwich met with Ms Fitzsimmons at the beginning of the year and created their research project title: “Effective Feedback in Harris Academy Greenwich”.

Their aim was to evaluate the importance of feedback from the perspective of staff and students and then to suggest improvements to SLT. The Head Boy and Head Girl led the commissioners and created questionnaires based on current thinking around feedback. The interviews took place during the second term and the Commissioners compiled their data and met again as a group once the interview stage was complete. They discussed their findings and were interested to learn that students valued live marking as it helped them improve their work in the

moment, whereas teachers favoured feedback after assessments as it gave students the next steps needed in order to improve their work. Both students and teachers valued verbal feedback as it builds confidence and gives students a chance to respond.

On the 6th of June the Commissioners presented to SLT and suggested that school management encourage teachers to use more live marking in their lessons. Assistant Principal Stephen Donovan then led a whole school Gaining Ground training session on live feedback and outlined its usefulness within the classroom.

The aim of the research was to find out whether creativity in the classroom increases the level of engagement of the students in classrooms.

The hypothesis states that students work better in a creative environment. They work better, focus more, are able to understand the tasks they are given and their grades start to improve.

Secondary research suggests that creativity has a huge impact on student learning and understanding. The research also suggests that both teachers and students should be open to new ideas, expand them, and share them. Students tend to keep their ideas to themselves and are not confident in sharing them.

The primary research involved students carrying out a series of lesson observations, looking at the different ways teachers use creativity in the classroom and whether it encourages students engagement. The students then feedback to teachers and the staff body as a whole, through the Teaching and Learning team.

In conclusion, creativity has a huge impact on the way students engage and how well they do in lessons. It also means that students are more likely to do better in their exams and get higher grades. If students are not focused and do not enjoy the lesson, they will not be wanting to go to their classes and will not try in their exams.

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Student Commission | Summer 2017

The Commission meets weekly to discuss teaching and learning across the Academy and students engage in educational debates and presentations with their peers regarding educational topics that they are passionate about. The Commission also takes a keen interest in National education policies which are featured in the news.

The latest national proposals are often reviewed and discussions form the basis of healthy debate surrounding the impact on teaching and learning for young people nationally as well at the Academy.

The Student Commission at Harris Academy Merton, which has been running for the past two years, consists of students from Key Stages 3 and 4.

For this project a cross curricular subject audit was completed by each member of the Commission. The students took a holistic approach to this project when auditing the performance of subject areas across the Academy and were able to highlight best practice. The Commission have also undertaken their own primary research into the views of students at the Academy and have also worked together to produce a student lesson observation form which they use when undertaking lesson observations.

At Harris Academy Morden we researched the question: which works best “short-term” revision techniques or “long-term” revision techniques?

This idea stemmed from a discussion concerning the different techniques that the students have been using to revise for assessment week. As a Commission we noted that whilst we, as students are often told to revise, there is less focus on how we actually should be revising. With regard to the overarching idea, half of a class will use long-term revision techniques and the other half will use short-term revision techniques in preparation for tests in three different subjects.

Our aims are as follows: 1. To test different revision techniques (long-term vs short-term) and accumulate data (test results) against which we can measure the success of the different revision techniques 2. To provide students with effective revision techniques that they can use going forward 3. To provide teachers with student-led analysis and ideas on how best to guide students in their revision Our hypothesis is that “short-term” revision techniques will prove more effective as from our experience these methods have enabled us to do well in our assessments. We look forward to sharing the results of this research with you.

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Student Commission Recommendations for

World Class Learning World-class learning requires regular, precise and personalised feedback. Our students need allocated time to respond purposefully to “Deep” marking and teachers should actively use “Live” marking to improve the impact of their feedback on students.

World-class learning means our students achieve Mastery of their subjects by working on rich, contextual problems which challenge their thinking.

World-class learning makes frequent use of partner-talk to engage and challenge our students on their journey to Mastery.

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Student Commission | Summer 2017

To achieve World-class learning our students need specific support on Mind-set to develop their resilience and reflectiveness. This is crucial to ensuring our students meet the rigorous challenges they are posed.

World-class learning means being open to, and valuing highly, the contribution of Student Voice. The Commission recommends each Harris Academy should have a Student Leadership Team who works to support the findings of the Commission.

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What makes for World Class Learning?

Learning isn’t just in the classroom, you need to contribute to your own individual learning.

Megan Baseby, Harris Academy Orpington

Rewarding effort, not just attainment.

Jovan Miller, Harris Academy Morden

Passion for the subject that entices the learner. It’s not about the facilities, it’s about the people.

I think uniqueness.

Cara Aarnes-Olsen, Harris Academy Bermondsey

Katie Farmer, Harris Academy Chafford Hundered

Feedback is imperative to student progress.

I believe that one-to-one feedback is fundamental to the growth and development of all students.

Sumayyah Ansari, Harris Girls’ Academy East Dulwich

Having a professional relationship with students.

Kailan Tee Hansen, Harris Academy Chobham

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Omari Simmons Duberry, Harris Academy Tottenham

It’s not just about driving progress forward, we also need time to reflect on past learning.

Toni Galabova, Harris City Academy Crystal Palace

Student Commission | Summer 2017

What impact has the Student Commission had in your academy?

We have learned to accept and challenge people’s views rather than tolerate them.

Thien Nguyen Harris Academy Bermondsey

We’ve increased student collaboration across our academy.

Shay Adubofour, Harris Boys’ Academy East Dulwich

The mutual respect between our staff and students has increased due to our research.

Jesse Osae, Harris Academy Merton

Challenge isn’t just an add-on, it’s embedded in lesson planning.

Students are now more independent and engaged; they feel empowered.

Rita Ramos, Harris Academy Battersea

Danielle Tah, Harris Academy Purely

Our work on creativity led to higher levels of student engagement.

Emilie Kalytyte, Harris Invictus Academy Croydon

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Harris Academy Orpington opened in September 2016 and as a newly opened Academy we have appreciated the opportunity to become part of the Student Commissioning project, as such we have undergone much change this academic year and our students are well placed to reflect on the changes with regard to what makes world class learning.

The Academy formed a student council made up of representatives across Key Stages 3-5 and led by the Head Boy and Girl. They in turn meet with the Regional Director, Dr Tomlinson, to share their views. To this end, our Student Commissioners have led a change through this forum and helped shape our school.

Significantly, the students have used this forum to contribute to the decision to change their school day; it now consists of a one-week timetable of 20 lessons, each 90 minutes long, over the previously complicated two-week timetable. Other areas the students have contributed to are: the teacher recruitment process, teaching and learning issues, and the options available in the canteen.

Throughout this year our students have taken a real ownership of the decision making process and as a result are empowered to share their views. The Student Commissioners have witnessed the tangible impact of their contribution in the Academy as we have grown this year.

As an academy we are looking forward to growing the influence of Harris Orpington Student Commission and to benefiting from the other opportunities now available to us across the Harris Federation. Our students are particular keen to benefit from the Harris Experience as they believe the cultural experiences on offer will broaden ambitions and raise aspirations in the pupil body. .

Increasing Student Political Literacy

We looked to improve student engagement in a pilot study across a range of foundation subjects.

In each subject ‘Lead Learners’ were asked to provide vital feedback on their own learning experiences whilst stating how they felt teaching and learning could be improved. The lead learners, were by definition students who had excelled in a subject and would therefore bring valid suggestions of improvement. In their role as a conduit between fellow peers and staff, they would review topics and give feedback on how engagement could be increased.

Specific success was seen in Citizenship, where students looked to develop their political literacy, before taking this learning into the tutor programme for others to learn also.

In Citizenship lessons, students felt strongly about the issue of voting age, and through the BBC School Report set out to research whether this should be lowered to 16.

This was done through a range of interviews with staff, teachers and students.

On completion, and through coincidence, the general election allowed students to use their knowledge to create a mock election, with mock manifestos as well as ballot papers for students to experience a vote (despite being under 18).

For the school community, the impact of the project could be seen across tutor time and around the academy, with an increasing number of students subsequently engaging in political discussions. Having been given a platform beyond their own classroom, where they could develop oracy, persuasive writing and speaking skills, the students had a new and relevant identity which in turn helped with their own confidence levels and raised engagement beyond their class.

Outside of the academy, students were reported as taking their knowledge home in order to shape their families voting.

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Student Commission | Summer 2017

The Harris Academy Purley Student Commission, spearheaded primarily

by Joshua Hunton (Year 8), Sayma Rahman (Year 10) and Danielle Tah (Year 10), have specifically been interested in developing Growth Mindsets and Independent Learning within the student body.

Each of the students chose a particular path to explore, recruiting classes and teachers to help shape their hypotheses and analyse their outcomes. Joshua looked at instilling suggestion boxes in selected classrooms to see how student driven ideas could help shape their own learning; Sayma studied the impact of an alternative reward and sanction system to the one currently employed across the academy; and Danielle looked at the how when students take ownership of their own learning – by planning and delivering activities to their peers – their confidence grows. All Commissioners found that whilst there were a number of challenges to be faced and refinements that could be made to help to adapt these ideas further, the results of their research showed the positive impact that could be made on student progress. They look forward to continuing their work and spreading some of these ideas school wide in the near future.

Creating a high performing academic environment whilst nurturing independence and creativity.

Our Student Commission, made up of students from each year group, were inspired to debate what makes world-class learning after our the day at Harris Academy Westminster. We spoke about what helped us learn as individuals, what creates focus, and above all, what helps us achieve. This was an attempt to define what ‘worldclass learning’ looks like and how to achieve it within our school to make us stand out in comparison to others across the globe.

After this discussion and having participated in a lot of reading around the research, we believe that worldclass learning balances challenge and intellectual learning with creativity and it is a balance and combination of all three, which will enable us to contribute in a global economy later in life. To achieve this in school we thought that we could be provided

with: large collaborative projects, more educational trips and more extra-curricular learning.

Ultimately, we focused our research on: “Creating a high performing academic environment whilst nurturing independence and creativity.” As part of our research we conducted a series of observations to analyse the prevalence of creativity, challenge and focus in a range of lessons. We were interested to see if there was a correlation.

Having analysed the data we are now ready to take forward our recommendations to the Student Commission. We hope our work contributes to Harris Academy Rainham always being a school that offers pupils the best starting point in life through a balance between challenge, creativity and focus.

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The Harris Academy South Norwood Student Commission has focused on answering the question: Is academic setting beneficial to progress and supporting student self-esteem?

Our Commission was interested in what makes Worldclass learning for all students and to what extent the idea of academic setting affects the students in our academy. A team of six students from across all Key Stages met every two weeks and undertook three forms of research: a questionnaire survey of 151 Year 8 students, interviews with members of our SLT and reviewing academic publications.

The conclusions of this research were fascinating and surprising. It was clear that there were proportionally more boys in lower sets than there were girls, yet, these boys still enjoyed being in sets. The results for girls were different, far fewer girls in lower sets enjoyed being in sets.

However, perhaps crucially, far fewer students thought setting improves learning. Only 51% of the students in the Higher Sets thought it improved learning (13% fewer than enjoyed being in sets), whilst less than half in the Lower Sets believe sets improve learning. On the one hand pupils enjoyed the challenge and self-esteem of being in Higher Sets but on the other hand those in Lower Sets seemed to suffer lower self-esteem as a result of knowing their set was lower. These conclusions were mirrored by our interviews with Senior Leaders, and similarly, despite most academic research suggesting setting is detrimental to low

Building Independence; Motivating students to engage with homework through exhibiting learning. Following Guy Claxton’s workshop on building learning power, our students chose to explore the extent to which they demonstrate independence in their learning. The discussion quickly centred on homework. Students were motivated to see whether if framed as a challenge, homework could become a source of enjoyment.

Following a literature review, our discussions centred on the role which knowledge retention will play in their academic

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Student Commission | Summer 2017

ability students we discovered that all leading politicians are consistently in favour of setting.

Overall, we have mixed feelings about academic setting as we found that lots of students enjoy being in sets but we also found evidence that students in lower sets are disadvantaged. Therefore, our key recommendations are: 1. We think it would be a good idea to alter the names of any sets so they are not identifiable by number 2. There should be more opportunities and lessons where students are mixed together. For example project work at least once a month in all subjects 3. We would like to do further research by conducting a survey in a school that has mixed ability setting

lives. The key finding that emerged was that through meaningful and self-initiated experiences, learning could become more memorable. Students then collated data from their peers, and from teaching colleagues around the challenges that currently exist with regards to homework.

From these findings, the idea of ‘Learning Exhibitions’ emerged. Within our Primary Phase, we have hosted ‘Learning Parties’ for parents to engage with the learning that is taking place. Our Secondary students suggested this transfer to the Secondary Phase. Through the creation of a thorough action plan and consultation process, plans are in place to use learning exhibitions as a cornerstone of the new Academy independent learning policy. Our Commissioners have already presented their ideas to staff through CPD sessions, and plans are now in place to host two learning exhibitions across the course of the next academic year. They have already extended their invitation to our Governors! Students will assess the impact this is having through further research and consultation.

analysis showed that no specific teaching style resulted in outstanding progress and that different teachers used a variety of approaches for their classes whilst still achieving high progress. There was a slight correlation between low ability classes and command style teaching. The teachers who adopted this style for these classes noted that they found it more productive to have a structured environment in order to ensure high levels of behaviour and therefore, engagement.

This year the Harris Boys’ Academy Student Commission has worked on a teaching and learning project with the aim of developing students’ understanding of teaching styles.

By learning about different teaching styles and how they are used, students will become more engaged in lessons as they will understand why they are being delivered in a specific way.

and either prove or disprove this by using an evidence based approach.

Our hypothesis was that a preferred teaching style for each teacher was a dated concept.

Through initial discussions, most students contended that in order to improve engagement, lessons should have more group work and be more pupil-driven. We decided to try

We conducted student questionnaires, staff questionnaires, and analysed class performance data to see if correlations exist between teaching styles and pupil progress. The data

The girls representing HGAED came back from the Student Council Commission (SCC) day with a range of ideas about how they could influence, and hopefully enhance, the quality of teaching within the Academy from their perspective.

These ideas had been generated both from personal experiences they have had of HGAED so far, and workshops they attended at

The student commission will be sharing their findings with students in assemblies this term. We will demonstrate how different teaching styles such as command style and guided discovery can each be effective and that teachers must draw from their own personality and experience to find the best way to engage each class appropriately. Both teachers and students agreed unanimously that student engagement is the key to pupil progress and through this project students will gain a better understanding of why teachers adopt specific strategies in class. This should in turn lead to even higher levels of student engagement at Harris Boys’ Academy, East Dulwich.

the SCC day itself. Around the same time as the girls attending and reflecting on the SCC day, our Student Council here at HGAED had been working on a project involving the use of podcasts in the Academy and training other students on how to make podcasts to support learning. The SCC rep focus was subsequently narrowed on the use of technology in teaching, especially in relation to the development and use of audio tools. The underpinning notion was that nearly every girl in the academy came to school with a set of headphones and a mobile phone to make calls and listen to music, so by default then had the necessary resources to utilise audio tools. Such tools could already be easily accessed, such as recordings of the analysis of poetry (available on YouTube for example). However, some could be produced by teachers and students in areas where more consolidation of learning was needed i.e. traditionally difficult areas of the curriculum – for example, electrolysis in Science. This was the area of focus for the SCC reps.

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Expert Opinions Student Voice and the Commission put students' needs and aspirations at the heart of the academy's mission, and ensures a true community approach to learning that drives standards up. It's been a pleasure to have been involved and to have been invited to contribute to the Commission. It is wonderful to see the students investing in themselves, their future and the future of their academy.

Phil Badham, an experienced educational consultant, speaker, and former English teacher

The proposals of the student commission amount to an excellent summary of the elements of high quality learning and the support that schools need to provide to enable their students to reach this goal. Meaningful response to feedback; working hard to meet high expectations in challenging tasks; and frequent opportunities to communicate and challenge ideas are what makes for a rapidly developing scholar. Meanwhile, the feedback from students will enable teachers to refine and individualise their delivery whilst assessing the developing levels of scholarly resilience. A wonderful manifesto for a better academy.

James Handscombe, Educational writer and thinker, Principal of Harris Westminster Sixth Form

Our Harris Student Commissioners have been pioneers in their research of what constitutes world-class learning, and as such, it is our duty to ensure that their expectations and aspirations are realised in our classrooms. By foregrounding mastery, our students are immersed in peer collaboration as well as securing conceptual knowledge to advance their increasingly sophisticated application of new learning. Not only do our Commissioners breathe new energy into our academies, but they instil a leading learners culture which benefits the entire academy community.

Rebecca Hickey, Executive Principal of Harris Academy Beckenham and Harris Academy Peckham, former lead for Student Commission

With thanks: David Astin, Michael Williams, Greg Cook, Noel Kennedy, Michael Gun-Why, Gus Houssein, Sam Rigby, Jon Lynes, Rebecca Iles-Smith, Steve Wheatley, Steve West, Simon Carrasco, Philippa Haigh, Alan Kelly, Alick Sylvestre, Jo Newell, Joy Mbakwe, Tony Machin, Ben Starkey, Shireen Dhondy, Ben Bray, Tom Grocott, Jack Wise, Stephen Donovan, Catharine Maddock, Lucie White, Shirley Twist, Gareth Lewis, Richard Owen, Paul Sarson, Helen Blake and Thomas Howells.

4th Floor, Norfolk House, Wellesley Road, Croydon CR0 1LH Tel: 0208 253 7777, Fax: 0208 253 7778 Email: info@harrisfederation.org.uk Website: www.harrisfederation.org.uk Student Commission  |  Summer 2017

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