PROGRESS Stories

Names matter

The majority of the student body wore headscarves. Over 80% were from Pakistan and all were female. The main issue that emerged when students started to explore their experience of school was that staff didn't know them as individuals.

The students reported that they were not spoken to by name, they weren't recognised by staff outside classrooms in the corridors and canteen. They found that staff mixed up their names and regularly exchanged the names of girls that were friends and tended to be found together or, worse in their opinion, addressed them as 'Hey you!'

Scoring for feeling connected to adults in the school was lower than for any other relational dimension.

When the data was explored with the students, they showed empathy for the staff in the school. They recognised that their names were difficult to learn for a majority European set of adults, and that headscarves made it much harder to see distinguishing characteristics for each student. They did not, however, think these sufficient reasons for not learning and knowing their names, or recognising them as individuals.

In response to this issue, the school brought together a working party comprised of staff and students to discuss how students could be recognised and remembered better. They came up with a number of strategies. Some of the simplest were to use name games and photographs. They thought it would help if games were played both when a group first started to work together and whenever it seemed as if names were not being remembered. The students thought that if the name games were varied and involved actions as well as saying the name, people would be more likely to remember which name went with which personality. It was proposed that teaching staff, support staff and supply staff have access to class photographs for the groups that they teach and cover. The students did not think there was any problem in referring to a sheet of photos and names. It was much preferable to getting names wrong or avoiding them altogether.

The students also wanted staff to invest more time in getting to know them as people, their likes, dislikes, tastes and opinions. When the student council consulted with the wider student body, they found that a majority supported the introduction of circle time in tutor periods. They recalled the powerful effect that circle time had on relationships at primary school, and saw no reason why it would not be an equally effective way of creating connections across tutor and teaching groups as well as in giving young people better opportunities to voice their views and adults opportunities for greater insights into young people's thoughts and opinions.

The strategies did not stop at the level of systems however. The students thought that structural changes in the pastoral organisation of the school would also help in getting to know students as individuals. They wanted to introduce a house system alongside the year system that already operated. Their view was that members of staff would be attached to one of the houses and would therefore have more occasions to mix with students in less formal settings such as inter-house sporting events, talent contests, assemblies and productions, charity fund-raising events and so on. The view was that as families of students would be allocated to the same house, there was more likelihood that staff would learn their names. They also thought that a house system would provide a better structure for supporting and advising students of all ages and of creating better links between older and younger students in the same house.

Some members of staff were less convinced about the structural change to a house system. They thought that whether the students were organised by house or year, work had to be done by adults and young people alike in order to learn, retain and honour the use of names in every adult-student interaction and exchange.

Click here for more information on the PROGRESS Programme.

PROGRESS Stories