Assistant Principal Report

Empowering Student Voice!

• Student Choice is the ability to make a purposeful decision, based on scaffolded options. 
• Student Voice is the ability to make a purposeful decision that is adaptive to considering alternate perspectives. 

As a student-centred school, we believe that every student’s voice matters, and incorporating their perspectives, thoughts, and attitudes into the planning for quality teaching and learning across the school. 

In an era where education is evolving at a rapid pace, it’s essential to empower students as active participants in their own learning journey. At our school, we recognise this need and have woven student voice into the fabric of our educational framework. By actively involving students in decision-making processes, we ensure that their opinions, insights, and needs are not only heard but also valued. 

One of the cornerstones of our approach is our commitment to gathering feedback directly from our students. We regularly organise focused classroom discussions, surveys, including our Student Perspective Survey and an ‘open to learning’ approach where students can openly express their thoughts about various aspects of their learning experiences. The Junior School Council (Student Voice) have been working on ‘student voice boxes’ for each classroom as a tool for gathering the thoughts and opinions of our students for each classroom including specialist and Innovation classes. In this way, we are being pro-active in ensuring our students opinions, insights and needs are not only heard, but truly valued. 

Our Student Perspective Survey ensures that our students have a say about their social relationships, relationship with their teacher and the learning in the classroom, in addition to their thoughts about the school. Our school staff will then utilise the data to alter their approaches and generate opportunities to support students with their social relationships. This survey was completed in Term One and our students will have an opportunity to complete this survey again in Week Eight of this term. Staff will measure the growth and then use the data to make reasonable change within their classroom and teaching and learning approaches.

Students at Glen Waverley Primary School are also actively involved in the co-creation of planning, Learning Intentions, Success Criteria, classroom learning and transfer of learning opportunities. This not only aims to promote a sense of ownership over their learning, but also taps into their creativity, helping to design engaging and relevant content for the students in our classrooms. 

In addition to this, we also have a plethora of students led initiatives which come from a service-learning lens or have an environmental focus, in addition to our lunch-time clubs which students have shown leadership in their creativity and implementation, leading positive change within our school community. 

However, empowering student voice isn’t just about enhancing the present, it’s about cultivating future leaders who are confident, empathetic, and capable of influencing positive change in society. By actively involving our students in the decision-making process, we are nurturing their leadership skills and helping them to understand the value of their voice; thoughts, ideas and opinions. 

What our Student Voice Captains have to say:

“Our opinions matter! Through student voice, we’ve changed learning in our classroom to be exciting and meets our interests.” – Oscar

“We are co-pilots, not just passengers. We get to work together with our teacher to create learning, change play experiences and share the guiding statements in OUR language.”- Adam

“You don’t just have to be in Year Six to share your voice – our prep students also have opportunities to share their thinking in their classroom, JSC meetings and when we collect information during play time.” Meera