Redesigning Schooling – 5: Student impact in the redesigned school

Student impact is a key part of SSAT’s Redesigning Schooling campaign, and for good reason: it has become clear through our work at SSAT that change can only be fully realised when all stakeholders are engaged in the process. “Redesigning schooling – Student impact in the redesigned school” by Tom Middlehurst charts the journey of student voice and student leadership towards a more complete and encompassing term: student impact. It provides the theory behind this development and shares practical examples of how schools are changing attitudes to learning by involving students in the redesign of schooling.

Student involvement in the management and development of a school was originally described as student voice, and subsequently extended to student leadership. Middlehurst describes a further and yet more ambitious stage: student impact – what happens when students have a real impact on their own and others’ learning experiences through meaningful student voice and leadership. Our understanding of student impact is drawn from excellent practice across the country, and built on SSAT’s previous work on personalising learning; student voice is seen as one of the nine ‘gateways’ to achieve personalised learning for every individual student (Hargreaves, 2004).

What we are talking about is any structured activity within a school that engages with students and enables them to have an impact on their learning, and potentially on the pedagogy and management of the school. Taken at its broadest, this could include the millions of informal, day-to-day interactions between staff and students. However, to distinguish student impact from what is essentially good pedagogy, this pamphlet interprets the term as the more formal, planned ways of engaging students to have an impact.

It ends with two perspectives, one from a headteacher and one from a student, which reiterates the case by illustrating the potentially deep and far-reaching impacts that can be achieved through engaging students meaningfully in all aspects of school life.