Students want to be trusted and challenged, even when it looks like they don’t! Leadership gives them a sense that they have something to offer, and that their experiences can be useful and helpful to others. Even the most disruptive, difficult student is showing leadership qualities – it’s just not in the right direction, yet.
A few months ago, the DfE cut funding to the school strand of The Youth of Today programme which was being led by the Citizenship Foundation. The Youth of Today began last year to improve the quality and quantity of youth leadership opportunities for teenagers aged 13-19. The resources produced for the scheme are no longer available and the Foundation are no longer able to offer specific support to schools on the topic of school leadership.
Learning to Lead – Using Leadership Skills to Motivate Students, published in March, demonstrates that students have positive leadership abilities, and they can be taught how to use these abilities and then to teach others. Just as important, if not more so, these students make a difference in the classroom, in their school and in their local community. When students see themselves as potential leaders they rethink the concept of involvement in their community. They move from a sense that leadership is for other people to a feeling that schools are places of opportunity.
Incorporating leadership learning into the curriculum in both primary and secondary schools challenges students to take responsibility for themselves and others, build their self-esteem and improve the lives of others in the school and local community. Isn’t this what the Government’s ‘Big Society’ is supposed to be all about?
Melanie Wilson
Commissioning Editor (Professional Education)
