Count me in – leaving no voice unheard

How do students really feel about the culture of their schools? Why not listen to their voices directly, asking them about their sense of belonging, wellbeing and if they feel safe in school, says Nic Ponsford.

Schools are data rich, yet data literacy is often inconsistent across staff groups – a patchwork of individual preferences and our lack of training in being data literate is often as confusing as those multi-rowed spreadsheets that enthusiastic SLT members share during an INSET day.

Data literacy

However, data literacy – what we use and how we use it to support student performance – is something that I am now exploring and want to delve into. I want to flip the idea of data demonstrating our students’ ‘loss of learning’ into surfacing a love of learning. The query posed (pun intended for data geeks) is that against a backdrop of post-COVID chaos and crisis, how do we purpose schooling that goes beyond taking tests and moves to use data as a means to better understanding people?

In education, we tend to celebrate standardised tests as the only meaningful data when it comes to student achievement. This is narrow to say the least, and we know does not factor in the wide range of barriers that are put in place for our students with additional needs: neurodivergent, the shamed and marginalised groups of students who do not find schools safe and are repelled from entering the school gates, let alone being ‘ready to learn’.

I believe it is time to reimagine what data collection is like for the students of today. Street-level data that is sown into the students’ lived experience and demands us to better understand the complexity that is learning. Parents are not interested in test scores; they are interested in attitudes to learning – or, more simply and importantly, ‘Is my child safe and happy at school?’

It might seem strange to put data at the core of inclusion but it is the only way to demonstrate the lived experience of the underrepresented.

Data represents people, it represents our stories and helps track growth. Through mindful and ethical data, we can connect decisions and experiences, investigate attitudes and values and drive action through a targeted lens for equity.

The research

The work into culture, diversity and inclusion (CDI) started with our international research project where we focused on school staff. Research tells us that we need the right ‘ecosystems’ in our schools before we start to support our learners. Once we had this proof of concept, we knew we were ready to create a comprehensive roadmap to equity and inclusion in schools focusing on students’ unique perspectives and needs.

We built and tested this with our collective of experts, Goldsmiths University and 50 student councils from around the globe. The experience of asking students about everything surveys was… astonishing (to be polite).

We learnt that school surveys were:

• unethical. Schools rarely even ask students to consent to surveys.
• age inappropriate. Surveys are often seen by teachers as ‘quizzes’.
• poorly designed. Questions about the school canteen were followed by anti-bullying and trauma-based statements.
• “Boring!” The design of the surveys is uninspiring and results in a lack of engagement at best or wore insult felt by students.

Getting student surveys right

• Ethical data. Built with the ICO Children’s Code – or ‘Age-appropriate design code’ – this is a data protection code of practice for online services likely to be accessed by children. Standard 1 of the Children’s Code requires online services to “treat the best interests of the child as a primary consideration when designing and developing” solutions.1 This is not just about GDPR but also how data and consent needs to adhere to the UNCRC Rights of the Child.
• Co-designed with schools. Working with three universities meant we knew that surveys needed two key components; the first was experts in survey design, clinical psychologists, academic researchers and those with lived experience. The second was understanding the age and abilities of the students.

We learnt that it is possible to ask early years pupils (from the age of three!) how they feel about the books and key people they know champion them in education. We learnt that ethical data for the underserved in our schools – staff and students alike – means that both qualitative and quantitative data capture is necessary to understand the narratives of lived experience, and educate the privileged school leaders that might have attitudes and values that create poor decisions and experiences for student bodies. And, finally, we learnt about the frankly utterly awful EDI and wellbeing surveys students are asked to complete (without consent), and that, after this, they never hear back from their teachers about what was learnt or put in place as a result of their very real and honest feedback.

What is the data telling us?

And the result? A straightforward and effective approach to assessing and enhancing Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI) for students in all educational environments. How do we know this? Students are telling their schools who they are and what they need for achievement, aspirations and attainment.

Here are some infographics from our pilot based on the voices of 2,000+ students over the summer of 2023 2:

References

1. ICO (2024) Age appropriate design: a code of practice for online services. Available at: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-resources/childrens-information/childrens-code-guidance-and-resources/age-appropriate-design-a-code-of-practice-for-online-services/
2. Global Equality Collective (2023) Survey results (taken students across their membership schools)