Pupils should have the right to complain to teachers about the way they are being taught and about levels of bullying at school, according to the Children’s Parliament.
In a report summarising what the charity has found over 21 years of listening to children’s views on learning and school life, the body also states that children should have the right for their complaints to be taken seriously.
Its own research has revealed that children want to be able to complain about bullying (see box, below), the way they are being taught, homework, if they are struggling in class and school meals.
However, pupils often feared that there would be repercussions if they complained, or that nothing would change, the Children’s Parliament said. They also felt that adults sometimes trivialised their worries.
All due respect
The report, School Should be a Joyful Place, says: “Children identified that an adult with responsibility to seek or hear a child’s complaint must be trained and have an understanding of children’s rights and how to communicate with respect for children.”
It also stresses the importance of children being “involved day-to-day, both individually and collectively - in the classroom and across school - on matters of teaching and learning”.
The report continues: “This means identifying what works well for them, but it also means recognising what is not…Teachers need to see themselves as a reflective practitioner, with the skills and the confidence to be both supported and challenged by children.”
TESS recently revealed that teaching watchdog Education Scotland plans to create a child-friendly version of school self-evaluation tool How Good is Our School? 4.
‘Teachers need the confidence to be both supported and challenged by children’
Outlining the changes at a workshop in September last year, inspectors said that pupils should be involved in evaluating the quality of the teaching that took place in their school, even if some staff found this difficult.
Responding, Larry Flanagan, general secretary of the EIS teaching union, said that pupils carrying out “crits” of teachers’ lessons was unacceptable and questioned whether they would have the skills to evaluate what was going on. But he added that feedback from pupils was welcome.
Colin Morrison, co-founder of the Children’s Parliament and a former secondary school teacher, said that whether children felt able to talk to their teachers about issues that were troubling them was very dependent on the school itself.
He added: “If a child has a worry or a concern - and that could be about learning and teaching or it could be a concern about their home life - they just want a trusted adult who will take them seriously and try to help them work things out.
“For us, it’s all about relationships. If you look at relationships, you avoid that sense of adults being undermined by children having their say. If you start with that, you can build an environment, classroom or school where everybody is included and respected. ”
Time and resources
Andrea Bradley, assistant secretary at the EIS, said that there were many ways for children’s problems to be raised in schools, from questionnaires and surveys to pupil councils and focus groups.
But, ultimately, many of the issues outlined in the Children’s Parliament report were also of concern to teachers, she added.
The EIS had long campaigned for smaller class sizes and adequate funding for additional support needs, which would give teachers more time to work with individual pupils and address concerns, she pointed out.
“Schools and teachers endeavour to get things right for every child, often in challenging circumstances and with limited resource,” Ms Bradley said.
