Listening and Responding to Pupils

We use Edurio surveys as a key listening tool, but this sits within a wider culture of continuous dialogue. Pupil voice is gathered through a range of formal and informal systems, including the School Council, class discussions, pupil leadership roles, focus groups, learning walks with pupils, wellbeing check-ins and regular opportunities for reflection within lessons and assemblies. Staff are trained to listen actively to pupils and to create safe spaces where children feel confident expressing their views.

Responsibility for listening to pupils is shared across the school. Class teachers play a vital role in capturing day-to-day feedback and responding at the classroom level. Our head pupils, subject ambassadors, house captains and the School Council are supported by senior leaders to raise issues, share ideas and contribute to decision-making. At a strategic level, senior leaders and the governing body take collective responsibility for ensuring that pupil voice is heard, valued and prioritised.

Turning pupil feedback into action is a clear and transparent process. Survey outcomes and qualitative feedback are analysed by senior leaders, shared with staff and pupils in an age-appropriate way, and used to inform school improvement priorities. Actions are agreed, assigned to named leaders and reviewed regularly. Importantly, pupils are informed of what has changed as a result of their feedback, reinforcing trust and demonstrating that their voice leads to real impact.

This year, several pupil-led initiatives demonstrate how our approach to pupil voice leads to real change. Following feedback from pupils, changes were made to the school menu to better reflect their preferences and dietary needs. Our head pupils also run a suggestion box, giving all children a direct way to share ideas and concerns, ensuring that even those less confident in speaking up can be heard.

In addition, head pupils organised a school-wide bake-off to develop cooking skills and encourage creativity, giving pupils a sense of ownership over extracurricular opportunities. Our PSHE and PRE ambassadors have led a range of charitable initiatives, such as the Box of Smiles project, enabling pupils to make a tangible difference in the wider community.

These changes were successful because pupils were actively involved at every stage, from identifying ideas to helping implement them. Leadership ensured that suggestions were taken seriously, acted upon promptly, and that pupils could see the impact of their voice, reinforcing a culture where children know they are listened to and valued.

Overall, listening to pupils is not seen as a one-off activity but as a core part of our culture. It shapes our decisions, strengthens relationships and ensures that our school continues to grow in ways that truly reflect the needs and experiences of our children.

We want our children to leave us as empowered young people who know they have a voice and know how to use it.

We are very intentional about how we gather pupil voice. Our school council is a serious commitment in which children run two-week election campaigns, write manifestos, canvass on the playground and involve their families in creating posters. Once elected, they attend formal meetings with agendas, folders and even a Year 6 secretary taking minutes. They are given specific tasks to gather views from their classes and report back. It is not tokenistic, it is representative and purposeful.

Alongside this, we have ambassador roles: mental health and wellbeing ambassadors, reading ambassadors, music ambassadors and more. This year, we had around 300 applications for these roles. When we asked children why they wanted them, many said it was because they enjoyed the responsibility and wanted to contribute directly to improving the school. That tells me something powerful: our children see themselves as active participants in shaping their community. Ultimately, as the headteacher, I am responsible for ensuring feedback turns into action, but this is shared work. Senior leaders, subject leaders and class teachers all play a role in gathering voice and acting on it.

One of the biggest changes has been around mental health and wellbeing. Through our survey, pupils told us they were feeling the pressure of work at home and at school, and that it was affecting how they felt. We took that seriously. We introduced a weekly mental health curriculum based on the RULER approach from Reception to Year 6. We trained staff, established mental health ambassadors and offered the “Timid to Tiger” parenting programme for families. We are now working towards our silver mental health award. That change was successful because it was rooted in what pupils told us and embedded across the whole school, rather than being a quick fix.

Some of my favourite examples are smaller but equally meaningful. A group of Year 6 girls wrote me a letter asking for a girls’ football team. It was heartfelt and determined, and from that letter, the Exwick Lionesses were born. We now have a thriving team, we have been awarded the FA Equal Access Award, and the girls are running sessions for younger pupils to keep it going. We have also introduced a Rubik’s Cube club after pupil requests and installed a table tennis table after older pupils said they wanted something more “grown up” at lunchtime. What made these changes successful is that children could see a direct link between their idea and the outcome.

Our Academy Parliament is central. Pupils are elected as MPs for specific roles such as Literacy, Wellbeing, SEND, outdoor learning and more, alongside a Prime Minister. They canvass their peers’ views and publish minutes for families. We also have Wellbeing teams, Sports Councils and Academy ambassadors, all prominently displayed in our foyer, so children see that leadership belongs to them.

Beyond formal structures, pupil voice is gathered through curriculum feedback, subject monitoring and leadership reviews. Crucially, when we analyse pupil voice, we ensure we hear from SEND pupils, pupil premium pupils, double-disadvantaged pupils and those without additional vulnerabilities. Listening isn’t representative if it only captures the confident majority.

The overhaul of lunchtimes is one of the clearest examples of acting on pupil voice. Pupils shared concerns and suggestions about how lunch felt. We changed the structure, adjusted the menu and rethought the flow.

Pupil voice has also shaped our extracurricular offer. We run over 30 clubs a year, and these are chosen through pupil surveys. Adults then choose from the list that pupils created. That mindset shift to prioritising what children want over what adults prefer to run has increased engagement and ownership.

Other examples include additions to the trim trail, the development of a new football pitch, and the move to maths and English specialist teachers. When pupils see tangible change, it reinforces that participation matters.

This also includes our school council, headboy and headgirl and regular opportunities to speak to visitors to school.

By enhancing their role as leaders across the school with clear, defined roles, set meeting times, leading assemblies and more collaboration with the teacher subject leader, our pupils see how their voice matters.

Using this forum, the groups meet with the headteacher and, following discussions, changes and adjustments are made. Finally, communication to all students happens via tutor slides.

Our most recent changes based on pupil feedback include dining changes, specifically, how we queue, the length of lunchtime, what’s on the menu, and our extracurricular offer. We’ve also seen changes in which clubs we do, when we bring in summer uniforms and where we go on theatre trips, based on the input from pupils.

We often seek feedback from our talented alumni group, and seek to further engage them in the running of the college through governance opportunities, through annual surveys and by getting them involved in both curriculum design (they are invited back in to liaise with curriculum leaders on curriculum intent and planning) and through working as paid external tutors. A senior leader takes responsibility for much of our student feedback collation (which occurs weekly as part of our Trinity+ tutorial programme), but the Principal also hosts regular feedback meetings as part of the strategy. So effectively, stakeholder feedback is highly valued, consistently collected, and systems are in place for the dissemination of data collected.

Head pupils and pupil ambassadors are trained to facilitate peer discussions sensitively, helping ensure pupils feel confident that their views will be heard and taken seriously.

To gather views from a wide mix of pupils, including quieter or marginalised voices, we use multiple approaches. These include surveys, focus groups, suggestion boxes, structured interviews, and pupil-led initiatives. Subject leaders conduct pupil conferencing across different year groups and subjects to capture diverse perspectives, while the headteacher hosts “Hot Chocolate and Reading with the Head” sessions, focusing on pupils who are quieter or less likely to speak up. Teachers also observe and record feedback during lessons and playtimes, ensuring all pupils have opportunities to contribute to shaping school life.

In one instance, this approach helped a pupil share worries about transition that we might otherwise not have known about.

When pupils are asked to speak more formally, for example, during monitoring or inspection conversations, we give them advance notice and thinking time. For some children, we use visual prompts or communication symbols to scaffold their thoughts. It is about building confidence, not putting them on the spot.

We are deliberate about inclusion. When gathering pupil voice, we ensure a cross-section of pupils are represented, boys and girls, different year groups, pupils with additional needs, pupils with English as an additional language, and those who might not usually put themselves forward. For our survey, we track completion carefully because every voice matters. Ambassador roles are also used strategically; sometimes we encourage particular pupils, for example, those with lower attendance or school-based anxiety, to apply, because we know that responsibility can strengthen belonging and engagement.

For SEND pupils in particular, we make sure every child is spoken to throughout the academic year. With around 17–18% of our cohort on the SEND register, we can realistically ensure every voice is heard. We also maintain a separate focus on vulnerable pupils, such as young carers, pupils under social care, those in uncertain living arrangements and recognise that their experiences may represent the extremes of school life.

We teach pupils that while not every request will be granted, every opinion will be respected. That honesty strengthens trust.

Rewarding children for their views is equally important. Another way we empower pupil voice is by giving them questions beforehand so that they can think of the answers and even talk to their peers to prepare together.

Students feel incredibly safe at the school, and we work hard on creating a positive, harmonious community in which students respect each other and the staff. Whenever we do student focus groups, we make sure all groups are represented.

Whilst we maintain confidentiality where we can, we are also honest about the fact that the college belongs to them and that, as active citizens and leaders, they should strive to be courageous, compassionate and temperate in offering feedback, and that we should be resilient in hearing it.