Involving Young People

• Overview
• Initial consultation
• Guidance on involving young people
• Hear by Right - standards to guide involving young people

Overview

The key principle that underpins all the personal development curriculum work is that young people should be at the heart. We want them to be engaged in this area of learning, view it as relevant and valuable to their lives now and in the future. Promoting ownership through involvement will facilitate this.

Planning, delivery and evaluation should include opportunities for young people to be actively involved with shaping provision, with their experiences of the programme being listened to and acted upon.

Initial consultation

As part of the Aim Higher project, a student consultation was carried out to gain views on the value and importance of the personal development curriculum. It included discussion to bring out the young people's opinions but also how they perceived the value placed on this aspect of learning by their schools and teachers.  This is a useful starting point with students to explore their feelings and an opportunity for staff to promote the principles for the PDC. Key questions to ask…

• What they think school is for?
• What do they hope to learn?
• What have they done that addresses this already? What, if anything, is missing?

Presenting the PDC at this point is a way of starting a discussion that links to entitlement, looking at what the school is already doing and gaining ideas of how to make it engaging and meaningful to young people.

Guidance on involving young people

The DfES have produced guidance to help you think through why and how to involve young people in their school learning provision. Click here to view a copy.

Hear by Right

Hear by Right is a tried and tested standards framework for organisations across the statutory and voluntary sectors to assess and improve practice and policy on the active involvement of children and young people. Click here to access the Hear by Right website.