We will invite students to engage by empowering them to lead discussions on their education. While student representation and Student Trustees support this goal, they only reflect some students across the student body. Our goal is to develop processes that:

  • Centre students’ voices in our work and decisions
  • Extend participation and democratize decision-making by building students’ capacities inside and outside classrooms

The First Steps Towards Student Leadership

To begin, we will motivate students by engaging them on topics and areas of interest. This plan will be used alongside Student Voice procedures as a benchmark for measuring how students have been involved in decision-making at the system level.

We will provide schools with student-friendly briefs on timely topics undergoing decision-making at the Board level. We will ask staff to promote and/or enable students to guide discussions and gather feedback in class or outside class time (i.e. during breaks, after school or through groups/clubs). This feedback can be returned to Student Trustees, student roundtables or the Student Engagement Officer.

We hope to build students’ capacity, comfortability, and confidence in leading conversations or activities. This opportunity also helps students who typically opt out of discussions around their education and does so in a space amongst peers that they are familiar with. It fosters student agency in decisions that ultimately impact them as the primary focus and beneficiaries of our work.