The Department of Education conducted its first ever training for primary school student leaders and mentors.
Consultant Elaine King, with more than thirty years’ experience working with UNICEF in the areas of education, health and youth was brought in to conduct the three days of training.
On the first day, Wednesday 19th April, 2023, mentors learnt the techniques that would help them support students participating in student government. The training on Thursday 20th and Friday 21st April, 2023.was even more intense and focused on the students.
Ms. King noted that Student Leadership was part of the wider effort to have more child- centred teaching and learning practices. She explained that though Student Leadership was not a formal part of the curriculum, it was useful for students to gain organisational skills, critical thinking, familiarization with the democratic process and the ability to communicate and represent themselves and others in an effective and respectful manner.
In traditional Caribbean society the thinking used to be that children should be seen and not heard. However, Ms. King observed that this was at odds with the rights-based approach to education.
“Every right carry responsibility,” Ms. King noted. “Teachers and parents may think students have no real responsibilities so they wonder how can children have rights? But the reality is that children do have responsibilities and adults should give them age appropriate responsibilities. A student may have a right to have a place to play at school but that comes with the responsibility to help keep the playground tidy.”
“If we do not give children responsibilities from early on, then we should not be surprised that when they get older and we suddenly expect them to ‘act responsibly,” she explained. “Then they don’t know how to behave properly because they were never taught how to take on responsibility before.”
Moreover, the Consultant disagreed that Student Councils were essentially an exclusive club for ‘a certain kind of student’. Rather, Ms. King pointed out that effective Student Leaders must be willing to represent their peers even where they were not personally affected and she highlighted the importance of Student Mentors and the school administrators to remind Student Leaders that they needed to engage with the wider student body and to help develop the systems by which they could do so.
When asked to comment specifically about the workshops for the students, Ms. King said that she found the students to be open and alert; one of the activities required them to find solutions to various problems or concerns and student were able to suggest effective ways to problem solve, sometimes including the involvement of a teacher/mentor or trusted adult/parent.
The Consultant suggested that to complement the rights based approach to Student Leadership, teachers might want to consider increasing teaching strategies that encourage young people to interact with each other. She noted that this was a suggestion that came from the students attending the training.
“Peer teaching can be an empowering and effective strategy that complements teacher centric or teacher directed learning,” she said.
Moreover, she indicated that it was important for parents to support the schools in giving children age appropriate responsibility and autonomy at home.
A total of thirty-six students across the six primary schools attended the Student Leaders training.
The outcomes of this project were to train mentors, develop a solid cohort of students who were more aware of their role as student leaders and the preparation of a Student Leaders Training Guide that mentors could use to continue further training as needed.
Student Leadership is an important aspect of the Child Friendly Initiative which Anguilla has subscribed to for over a decade.
The Department of Education’s Mission is “Raising Standards for Sustainable Development”.
