We place enormous value on pupil voice in our school, believing that, along with excellent personal development opportunities, it is central to our children’s success.
And so for the past four years, we have ensured that every Year 6 pupil has had an “extra” role, demonstrating to them that their ideas are valuable, and building their confidence as they learn to advocate for themselves and others.
The impact has been tangible. Attendance has improved year on year for the past four years. Our persistent absence rate for all pupils is low (4 per cent in 2024), placing us in the top 2 per cent nationally. Persistent absence among our disadvantaged pupils is also low, at 5 per cent.
In key stage 2 data in 2023, our disadvantaged pupils achieved well above the national average, with 70 per cent meeting the expected standard, compared with 44 per cent nationally.
On top of all this, the additional roles are having a brilliant impact on the younger pupils’ behaviour. As they see our Year 6 pupils modelling exemplary behaviour, they look to replicate it because they want to be considered for these roles in future.
These are our tips for creating meaningful additional roles:
Look beyond traditional student leadership roles
The vast majority of schools have well established student leadership roles such as school council members, house captains or prefects. We do have the traditional head boy and head girl roles, but we also have arts, science and music leads for children who demonstrate a clear talent and interest in these subjects, as well as a digital leader and a dance captain. All are seen as prestigious roles within the school community.
These additional roles have helped us to empower all pupils, including those with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). For example, our music leads choose the songs we learn to sing and, on National Lego Day, our play leaders devised amazing challenges.
Listen to pupils’ interests
While we do draw on senior leadership team knowledge to decide which pupils should be given each role, we also make the decision based on pupil preference: we ask students what role they want and why. Their answers aren’t always what we expect. Sometimes the child you’d assumed would want to be head girl actually wants to become a science ambassador.
Supporting the children’s interests increases their engagement and it’s brilliant to see them considering how different roles might benefit them. Ofsted inspectors picked up on this, highlighting a conversation with our IT lead, who spoke about his interest in completing an apprenticeship to become a mechanical engineer in the future, having researched what careers he might want to work towards by himself.
Set high expectations
We make sure that being awarded an additional role is a big deal. The captain of our football team, for example, has an “official signing” and gets their photo taken as if they had signed for a professional team.
We take the roles seriously and have a statement of intent for every one, outlining our expectations of the pupils, as well as detailing what they can expect from us. Our art lead will meet with leaders, governors and trust leads, for example, to speak about what art means to them and what they would like to see taught in the school.
Celebrate success
We hold a weekly assembly to celebrate our pupils’ achievements, including acts of kindness and, notably, the support our Year 6 pupils are providing to others through their additional roles. Our pupils are nominated mainly by other children and these nominations are recorded in the esteemed “golden book”.
Celebrating every win really helps the children recognise what they are achieving above and beyond their learning in class.
I am delighted that this model is going to be replicated at primary schools across our trust. We can’t wait to see the difference that it makes elsewhere.
Lisa Davies is executive headteacher at Rodbourne Cheney Primary School in Swindon (part of The White Horse Federation)
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