How much do we know about what all our students think about school?

We know a lot about our students as individuals. Each of our teachers places a priority on building a good relationship with each student they teach. That’s the basis for effective learning and the Hagley way of doing things. We call this ‘knowing each learner.’ Knowing each learner means many things: teachers connecting with a student’s prior learning, cultural background and experiences to make learning relevant. It’s also about being a good listener and finding out what our students are thinking.

What each student thinks matters. Every individual deserves to be taken seriously and have their ideas and viewpoints considered. But what’s really powerful and can mean we can work effectively as a school is if we know what ALL of our students think. Over the next part of our school year, we plan to find out more about what our students think about school and their learning. We’ll be in touch with more details with parents and whānau soon.

Recently, I wanted to make a point about how it’s useful to understand the big picture.  I asked our Year 9, 10  and 11 students at their assemblies what they thought should be the NZ flag. I also gave them a third option: you’d like a new flag but not the one proposed. The results were resoundingly in favour of retaining our existing flag, with at least 95% of Year 9s, 80%+ of Year 10s and 90%+ of Year 11s supporting no change.

The point I made with our students is that’s new information for us. We can’t control which flag New Zealand has with that information, but imagine if we had the big picture about what students think about school , then we can use that information to improve. That’s powerful information.

Knowing the big picture can really help us to be more effective and target our work when it comes to what we focus on as a school. We can do a better job if we know what all our students think about school and their learning. Things about learning might include if there’s the right amount of challenge at school, or if students feel that their teachers help them learn. What students think about school might be if they feel it’s a safe place and if they look forward to coming to school.

It’s all about student engagement – being interested in school and feeling connected to it is important. If we know what everyone thinks, that’s a first step in helping our fantastic teaching team to be even more effective.