StudentVoice

StudentVoice
Location England
Established 2003
Website StudentVoice

StudentVoice (formally the English Secondary Students' Association or ESSA) is a representative association of secondary students in England. StudentVoice is run for students aged 11 to 19 years old, representing their interests in national education policy making and supporting young people in having a voice on issues which affect their lives at school or college.

StudentVoice styles itself as a representative organisation for students in key stages 3–5 (year groups 7 to 13) throughout England. StudentVoice provides support, training and advice to help students to get involved in decision making at local, regional and national level.

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 Unions)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. In 2011/12, the organisation was reformed as StudentVoice in a transition period presided over by Luke Shore.

Structure

ESSA was run by a Council made up of 18 students elected by the organisation's members. There were two elected Council members from each of the 9 regions in England. The Council aimed to ensure that the actions taken by ESSA were representative of the views of school students and ESSA members.

Following the re-formation of ESSA as StudentVoice the council model was evaluated and a steering group of young people looked at possible future representative models. From 2012, a new structure was adopted consisting of a National Executive of 12 members and a Director.

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 5 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;

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

External links