How do we develop Pupil Voice in our schools, enabling young people to become active and responsible global citizens? Erasmus Project

Project Title

How do we develop Pupil Voice in our schools, enabling young people to become active and responsible global citizens?

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; Health and wellbeing; Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills

Project Summary

Context/background of the project;
In an increasingly complex world, where societal and global tensions are growing, we seek to nurture future citizens who have a sense of Global Citizenship and pride in promoting and shaping a future plural society. In this context both partner schools in the UK and Finland seek to resolve the question of:
‘How do we develop Pupil Voice in our schools enabling young people to become active and responsible citizens?’

Objectives; We set out to (i) Plan and design a suitable platform on which we could (ii) Share our experiences and (iii) discover and learn from best practice whilst (iii) developing novel teaching approaches to answer this key question. In order for pupils to be effective and successful European and global citizens they need to be able to communicate with confidence. Multi-literacy was identified as an area of concern in both schools. It had been identified in each school that pupils cannot achieve the best in basic reading and writing unless they are confident speakers and communicators.

Number and profile of participating organisations;
Dunkirk Primary School is in an urban city setting with 42 staff to 420 pupils from diverse social backgrounds, predominantly local children with a high proportion of non-english mother tongues (36 nations and 42 langauages spoken) and those from transitional migrant families, with social mobility from poor through to privileged.
Rastaala School Espoo-Finland by contrast is in rural/suburban setting with 50 staff to 580 pupils from predominantly upwardly socially mobile professional families, coping with a recent influx of non-Finnish pupils from settling and transitory migrant families.

Description of undertaken main activities; (a) The country coordinators planned the curriculum with a view to supporting the project but also to scale up across whole school Curriculum wide integration; (b) Coordination of staff and pupils in readiness for the exchange visits to maximise opportunities for target pupils and staff that had most to gain; (c) Conducting the exchanges as planned and leveraging of emerging opportunities for increased learning; (d) Reflection and dissemination

Results and impact attained;
Both schools successfully identified the need to develop Pupil Voice within their learning communities.
The project focused on improving the attainment of all pupils who are not reaching expected levels in multi-literacy . The ability to speak, listen and communicate through different media was achieved as an essential skill for all targeted pupils and also had a profound effect on their families and the community at large across both UK and Finn school communities. This project successfully enabled and encouraged all pupils and teachers to investigate different ways of communicating their ideas, thoughts and opinions using both verbal and non-verbal techniques and strategies. Pupils are now able to communicate, discuss and debate beyond the comfort zone of their own classroom. They have become flexible communicators, with the ability to adapt and empathize across both local and European/Global contexts. Working as partner schools in Europe provided us the ideal opportunities to develop global dialogues where a deeper understanding of each other’s cultures, perspectives and opinions successfully took place.
Data analysis of targeted pupils shows significant improvement in their actual literacy scores. Of the pupils monitored:
Reading – 80% of pupils made more than the expected progress
Reading – the pupils involved made, on average, 3.4 points of progress. The expected progress was 2.0 points
Reading – average progress from KS1 to end of KS2 of last year’s Y6 pupils involved in the project was 1.2. National average was 0 so puts us well above average
Writing – 60% of pupils made more than the expected progress
Writing – the pupils involved made, on average, 3.2 points of progress. The expected progress was 2.0 points
This data has confirmed that the involvement in such projects is crucial to help pupils attain the very best they can in all areas of development .

Longer Term Benefits

The project, ‘Pupil Voice’ looked collectively at the Big Question ‘What Kind of a World would we like to live in?
Due to the global themes covered the project gave all participants an enhanced sense of their ability to affect change on an individual and collective level. The two themes covered were Greed and Power(Year 1) and Equality and Racism(Year 2). Their engagement with issues such as the treatment of Refugees has developed an acute awareness of injustice around the world and how things must change.
In total 42 pupils 20 staff were able to participate in European travel, some had never stepped out of their own country, this has developed a confident European identity for all who took part and has raised their aspirations significantly not only academically but in possible options for the future and also made friends for life.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 77920 Eur

Project Coordinator

Dunkirk Primary and Nursery School & Country: UK

Project Partners

• Rastaalan koulu