The best thing schools can do now? Listen to their students.
Tranquiliti’s co-founder George writes about how schools should pause and listen to their students in order to best support them.
Three years ago, I was on Year Here placement at a school in central London, tasked with the role of helping students to be happier and more successful. I had no idea that I would later use what I learnt to support young people through a global pandemic.
My placement school was exceptional. The students — most of whom were from relative disadvantage — achieved high grades and got into top universities. The school adopted innovative approaches to learning and helped students position themselves to start promising careers. What more could I add?
To find the answer, I had to understand how the students felt about their school and their lives in general. I was there to learn about how I could help, so I had to look past the conventional metrics of success and empathise with the students. Fundamentally, I just had to ask the right questions.
Let’s start with empathy.
I’m sure that if you walked into any school in the UK and casually asked the students what they thought about it, you’d probably get a fairly flippant response. And if students decided how schools should work, registration would be at 11 a.m., lunch would last for two hours, and maths would be optional.
Having said this, the perspective students have on their education and life is hugely important, and every school should care deeply about the answers students give to certain questions. Do you trust teachers at this school? Do you enjoy learning at this school? Do you feel like you belong at this school? Are you sleeping well? Do you often feel anxious?
I was at the school only a few years since it had excelled from the second-worst school in the country to a thriving institution — and they achieved this through the application of a set of educational principles. When I asked students about the school, I could see they were a little taken aback, and that the strict application of these principles meant that being asked their opinion was unusual for them.
This left me wondering if the school really knew how the students felt about their lives and experiences at school. From broader research, I learnt that this wasn’t isolated to just my school.
The movement against this is called Student Voice. It’s based on the idea that if you bring the thoughts and feelings of students to the core of how schools operate, and listen and respond to their concerns, they tend to be happier, more engaged, and more likely to succeed. When I started Tranquiliti, the aim was to help every school do just this. We’ve built a digital service that asks students questions about their wellbeing and life at school, so that staff can see what’s truly going on with their students, and so that every child can feel heard and supported.
Respond to lockdown, and looking ahead.
In January of this year, we were piloting a basic version of the service with 30 students at Harrogate Grammar School — all we had was an app that asked students weekly questions about their wellbeing and life at school. We didn’t even have a dashboard for staff; all we could do was analyse the anonymous data ourselves, create “insights” on Canva, then email these to staff. Yet even from that early testing, the feedback from students was resounding — it was nice to be given the time and space to tell the school how they’re feeling.
When lockdown hit, we gave Tranquiliti to every student in the school, and throughout the period we helped the school to understand how their students felt while at home, both concerning their school work and the pandemic, so that the school could respond to their needs.
Thankfully, students have now in large part returned to the classroom, meaning that staff can finally communicate with students face-to-face and try to see how they’re doing. While the importance of this can’t be overstated, we believe that this process in itself is not enough.
In response to the pandemic, schools are re-evaluating what’s important, and are increasingly prioritising students’ health and happiness. If schools want to do this effectively, the voice of students must be central to their decisions and approach, and asking students meaningful questions needs to be woven into the fabric of school life.
Not only is this essential for students to feel supported, but without it, how else can schools really understand their students, and know for sure how to help them be happier?
