Pupil voice: A step-by-step guide for teachers

In this blog, Kelly Harris, Brook’s Head of Participation, explains how to ensure pupil voice is at the heart of relationships and sex/sexuality education (RSE).

There’s often a gap between what young people say they need to learn in RSE and the lessons they receive in schools. The most effective way of bridging this gap is through pupil voice.

Pupil voice is central to all our work at Brook and has been for decades. In celebration of Brook’s 60^th anniversary this year, it feels like the perfect time to use this expertise to support you to embed pupil voice in your RSE delivery.

What does pupil voice actually mean?

Pupil voice is underpinned by Article 12 in the United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), which states that children and young people should be given the opportunity to have a say in decisions being made about their lives.

By empowering young people to share their RSE needs and shape the education they receive, we can foster a more engaging and meaningful learning environment that supports the development of confident, informed young people.

Involving pupil participation in RSE can feel more daunting than other subjects because it’s not just a ‘classroom subject’: Each young person will have different life experience, values, culture and knowledge that will influence their unique approach to sex and relationships.

But don’t let the sensitive nature of RSE be a barrier to engaging with young people. To help, here are some steps you can take to provide opportunities for effective pupil participation.

How to engage pupil voice in RSE

Step 1: Plan and outline your engagement

As young people are rarely involved in the planning, delivery or feedback process of their education, they may be confused as to why they are being asked for their opinions about RSE.

So before you start the process of involving their voices, it is important to be clear about your rationale for involving them by considering these questions:

• Why do you want young people to have a say in the RSE they receive?
• How will it benefit young people to have a say/ownership of the RSE they receive?
• Have you discussed your intention to involve young people with other staff to learn and share best practice?
• How will you ask young people for their contributions in RSE?
• How will you feed back to young people what impact their contributions have made?

Being clear about these questions means you can plan ahead and ensure that you are providing meaningful opportunities for pupil voice.

Step 2: Prepare for potential challenges

It may not be easy to engage young people about their RSE. You might be met with different reactions including refusing to participate, embarrassment, nervousness, anger/frustration, tearfulness, curiosity/interest, or giggling/silliness.

To help with this, make sure you’re using supportive and inclusive messaging, be patient, avoid jargon, provide lots of reassurance, don’t assume knowledge or understanding and provide praise and encouragement.

Step 3: Create a safe space

It’s important to provide young people with safe, non-judgemental spaces, so they feel comfortable to share their thoughts. This safe space is crucial to identifying emerging trends that they are currently experiencing, such as misogynistic behaviour, which your RSE lessons can then help address.

How to create a safe space?

• Co-create a group agreement for RSE lessons. During your first lesson with young people, create a list of expected behaviour for both teachers/youth workers and young people. This could include things like respect, listening to each other, non-judgemental, confidentiality and inclusivity. Recap this list at the beginning of any future RSE lessons.
• Outline the consequences of breaking the group agreement or poor behaviour towards staff or other students.
• Explain confidentiality including clear examples of what information would need to be escalated via your safeguarding protocol.

Learn more about creating a safe space with Brook’s training session

Step 4: Involve young people in RSE design

Pupil voice isn’t just about what topics are covered in lessons, it’s also about how young people want to learn and how they enjoy learning. You might want to find out whether they prefer presentations, interactive games, research activities or group discussions. And this may influence which method you choose to involve pupil voice. Here are some examples:

• Suggestion box: Young people respond well to making suggestions, providing comments or asking questions anonymously. This may be a one-off or a permanent fixture to your RSE lessons.
• Questionnaires: Ask young people a range of questions anonymously. It might be that you also involve young people in the process of analysing the results of the questionnaire to develop their research skills.
• Question time: Give students time to prepare questions and hold a safe space in which to share ideas and build an ongoing conversation with them.
• Interactive digital platforms: Ask questions anonymously, use a poll, or rank ideas with platforms like Menti.
• Co-create a lesson: Work with young people to develop a lesson or workshop that will help foster responsibility and ownership of RSE delivery.

Step 5: Lesson evaluations  

Lesson evaluations are another way for pupils to shape their RSE by collecting qualitative feedback after each lesson.

Pupil voice questionnaires need to be a safe space for young people to contribute, so it’s best if they’re anonymous. If you’re working with a group over a long period of time you could use distance-travelled methods to track how their confidence and understanding has changed over time.

Step 6: Feedback

Make sure you feed back on both the outcomes, and impact, of young people’s contributions to RSE development. This could include a ‘You Said, We Did’ feedback form, a verbal update, showcasing any new lesson/workshop resources, and promoting any future opportunities where they can get involved.

Undertaking a ‘lessons learnt’ activity is also good practice as you can ask young people what they might have done/would like to do differently in the future.