StudentVoice
StudentVoice (formally the English Secondary Students' Association or ESSA) is a body for secondary students in England. StudentVoice is run for students aged 11 to 19 years old and supports young people in having a voice on issues which affect their lives at school or college.
StudentVoice is currently working to become a representative organisation for students in key stages 3â5 (year groups 7 to 13) throughout England. StudentVoice provides support, training and advice to help students to get involved in decision making.
History
The organisation ESSA began as a network of English school students who had attended European school student events organised by OBESSU (Organising Bureau of European School Student organisations)from 2000-2002 in Denmark, France and Spain as observers. In 2001/2 they held workshops at events organised by CRAE, British Youth Council and the UK Youth Parliament and organised a one day conference at Sharnbrook School in Bedfordshire to advocate the need for ESSA. One of the group, Mehreen Malik, became an intern at the TES in 2002 and wrote a piece in the paper about the idea of ESSA. In 2003 a 17 year old school student, Rajeeb Dey quite independently saw the need for something like ESSA inspired by reading about the foundation of a school student organisation in Ireland. He was introduced to the Phoenix Trust by Derry Hannam who had been coordinating the embryonic ESSA network. He obtained a Level 1 Award from UnLtd- the Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs. ESSA was publicly launched at the Trades Union Congress in February 2005 where over 200 students gathered to discuss the future direction of the organisation and NUS President Kat Fletcher was the keynote speaker.
Council
Formally the Council was made up of 18 students who were elected by members of what was then ESSA. There were two elected Council members from each of the 9 regions in England. The Council aims to ensure that the actions taken by Student Voice are representative of the views of StudentVoice's student members.
Following the re-formation of ESSA as StudentVoice the council model is being evaluated and a steering group of young people is looking at possible future representative models.
Projects and campaigns
Campaign 4 Change in October 2007 ESSA launch Campaign for Change, a project which was funded by V and aimed to get as many young people campaigning about issues that they cared about as possible. ESSA achieved this in a number of ways, most notably through the creation of their workshop 'Campaign 4 Change', run entirely by young people, the C4C training was eventually taken by more than 2000 young people and is still being used today.
Manifesto 4 Change on the 5th May 2009, ESSA launched their video competition 'Manifesto 4 Change' at Portcullis House, Westminster, with the support of many organisations and individuals including Natashca Engels MP, Channel 4 and NESTA. With a view to eventually creating a written manifesto for the next general election, ESSA have invited young people to send in up to 3 minutes of video on what they think should be changed in the education system.
There are 5 categories;
- Teaching and Learning
- Where We Learn
- Enjoying Education
- Student Voice and Leadership
- The Future of Education
After the deadline for entries of 18 June 2009, the videos were judged and the winning entries were shown on Channel 4. As well as prizes for the winners, all of the views from the videos were used to create a Students' Manifesto to show politicians what students want!
See also
- National Union of Students of the United Kingdom
- National Union of Teachers