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Student Leadership: Creating Learning Communities Editorial The changes recently announced by the Government with protests that there are other ways of making pots, and in respect to targets and target setting should only be given a particular square pots, are denounced as ignorant trouble cautious welcome; for example only time will tell whether makers, despite the fact that the potters have no argument the (retained) KS1 test will actually lessen in importance. with the actual notion of having square pots. It should also be remembered that the new primary Bureaucracy conveniently overlooks this and accuses strategy issued in May 2003 states that the government still the potters of deliberately trying to sabotage their plans expects that 85% of all eleven year olds will achieve Level and bring back round pots, (which are so very yesterday). 4 by 2006. Is the chance for schools to take charge of their The skill and experience of the potters is overlooked, own targets merely a matter of a political moratorium for indeed it is even brought into question: who can rightly two years in order to buy time before the next election? call him/herself a potter who cannot make square pots Any new targets will anyway be subject to LEA and on a revolving wheel? Stands to reason they don’t know Ofsted scrutiny and in their turn these are ultimately what they’re talking about. Consequently the government beholden to government directives. Their present targets bureaucrats will have to tell them how to do it. The fact are very unlikely to show much alteration unless it can be that none of them have ever been potters is considered demonstrated that the new relaxation is more than just a to be entirely beside the point. After all, in their private temporary holding operation. Whose targets are going to opinion, it’s a comparatively low level skill. In fact it could have to take precedence after 2006? Are schools then going very possibly be undertaken by the pottery-room assistants to have to drop their own ones to return to the inappropriate who prepare the clay and unpack the kilns; a lot cheaper, government targets? The document seems particularly, and and they do so love their work. some might say significantly, reticent on this point. The potters have tried to do as they have been bidden; Changes are also planned for secondary schools but they have taken to all kinds of subterfuges but the main they too will call for close examination to see whether the one has been to slow down the wheel when no one has target-setting culture in which these schools currently exist been watching (OfPOT pay rather frequent visits though). has not merely been re-structured and called by another The result has been a substantial number of misshapen pots name. It is to be remembered that the present government which has annoyed the bureaucrats a great deal. is not one that lightly gives away any measure of control. It has therefore been necessary to set potters detailed The editorial of this edition of Forum reflects the targets. The chief bureaucrat privately welcomes a zero- viewpoint that at base the government’s tight oversight tolerance approach, with potters who cannot ‘hack it’ of its inappropriate targets, however temporarily ‘relaxed’ being ‘taken out’. (his very words) The potters find it hard they might appear in the short term, is likely to remain as to decide which they despise most: the sentiments, or the long as league tables continue to exist. resort, in a civilised country, to Al Capone-type street slang to describe Government policy. Inappropriate Targets: At first only fifty percent of pots had to match the very square pots made on round wheels? exacting criteria demanded by squareness. Statisticians had Just for the sake of argument, suppose everyone agrees told the Government bureaucrats that that was a reasonable that square pots are what we should all be making. The expectation given the normal curve of distribution. government thinks they are important, the populace agrees Unfortunately most of the Bureaucrats had only ever and teachers support the idea. All know the material out of done rows of sums, not statistics, and even the word which they are to be made, although some are distinctly average had had them baffled at one time. So it was that better informed when it comes to understanding the varying one day a young bureaucrat with vision, a.k.a. ambition, nature of different clays. The job of making these square suddenly said why stop at 50%? Why not 70%? 80% 85%? pots is given by government to trained and experienced That would mean more square pots than our European potters who know how you go about making square pots. competitors and well, wasn’t that the point? These potters know the correct consistency of the clay The potters did what they could under the most difficult before it can be moulded, how long it should be dried and of circumstances; square pots after all have many more how to stick on the awkward bits like handles. They also potential problems. Each face is separate and has to be know the temperature at which it should be fired and how joined carefully to the next one which is where cracks to apply the glazing. They also know that each hand made and distortions so often occur. And that was making them pot is subtly different. Unfortunately this expertise is not normally, let alone attempting to make them on a revolving necessarily appreciated by their employers. wheel. Potters muttered under their breath that there were This is demonstrated when, much to the potters’ far fewer problems when pots were made as a round horror and amazement, the government decrees that whole. Those bureaucrats who overheard them reminded all square pots should be made on a revolving potters’ them how much harder that made their job: square, flat wheel. ‘Everybody’ knows that’s how potters should do it; things being so much easier to measure than round ones. otherwise it simply doesn’t count as pottery. Anyone who Suddenly the potters saw what it was that really mattered FORUM, Volume 45, No. 2, 2003 33 to their masters. It wasn’t square pots that they took delight However many of the better potters decided they in, it was measuring them that enthused what passed for had had enough and left off being potters and turned to the official soul. The Chief Measurer did in fact admit something else like gardening…. No problem, said the that he had very precise ideal measurements in mind for Government bureaucrats, plenty more where they came each size of square pot and he would readily reward those from, we’ll just have a recruiting drive for more young who pleased him by producing assembly line perfection potters. This only worked up to a point though – very soon and there was also more than a hint of punishment for two-thirds of those who were newly trained potters left the those who didn’t. Those that said they didn’t actually job saying they were being treated like robots. ‘Ah, robots’ care were the particular targets of his wrath. ‘Don’t care said the Chief Measurer, who was never at a loss for a new was made to care’ said he, quoting his old nanny, and told initiative, ‘now that’s an idea….’ the potters they would be put into something called, not Annabelle Dixon unsurprisingly, ‘special measures’ if they didn’t toe the line. 34 FORUM, Volume 45, No. 2, 2003 Student Leadership: creating learning communities ELISE ALEXANDER & PHIL SANDELL This article is based upon an evaluation of a Conference on Student Leadership held at the National College for School Leadership (NCSL) in Nottingham, December 2, 2002. The conference was organised by the Bedfordshire Schools Improvement Partnership (BSIP) and we acknowledge the support of BSIP and NCSL in the writing of this article. The Conference on Student Leadership was held on In this paper we refer to the new vision for student December 2nd 2002 at the National College for School leadership proposed by the Conference, a vision that we Leadership in Nottingham. Workshops were run by eleven share and one that places leadership within the grasp of schools, with a twelfth workshop being a focus group all pupils and engages them with real issues connected directed by two students representing the Bedfordshire with the future of their schools and the well-being of Schools Improvement Partnership (BSIP). Each of the the school community. We consider the climate that is schools involved in presenting a workshop set up a display necessary in schools if student leadership is to be fostered in the West Atrium of the college and also prepared a and some of the issues to be addressed in order to sustain summary of student leadership activities that was currently it. In particular, we examine the differences in students’ happening in the schools. From analysis of our evaluative perceptions of student leadership compared with teachers’ data, holding conversations with delegates and listening perceptions. to presentations at the Conference, we heard about many different types of student leadership from traditional roles A Significant Voice such as prefects and team captains to more innovative and We see student leadership as a concept in which students sensitive roles such as students as researchers, mediators evolve a significant voice in order to make a difference. and counsellors. Student leadership is not simply having the power to speak In the past, student leaders in schools have traditionally and the right to be heard; it is a commitment to work for been appointed by teachers to carry out the functions that the well-being of others in and even beyond the school they, the teachers, wish to be carried out.
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