Pupil Voice

Autistic Pupil Voice

At Springfields we value pupil voice to shape our provision and to support our young people in their journey to a ‘safe independent life’.

We have various approaches to gathering pupil voice based on research into effective strategies that help our learners with autism to communicate their thoughts and feelings around specific topics.

• Mosaic approach – this is based on the assumption that ‘children are experts in their own lives’.
  • Scrapbook – capture perspectives of learning experiences by using mediums of the pupils choice e.g. diary entries, narrative, pictures, poems, photo’s, maps, drawings. (Temple Grandin – thinking in pictures)
• Secret box – concrete or virtual – post perspectives about teaching and learning/care anonymously.
  • This method does not need to involve interaction, communication or social niceties.
• Pupil Surgery - lunchtime surgery for pupils to discuss their thoughts and feelings around specific topics.
  • For our learners were written/pictorial communication is a barrier therapy team will action a response. 
• Time to talk -Children are aware of time to talk boxes that are placed around the school. If they have a specific concern a note can be dropped into these and a member of our therapy team will action a response.
• Pupil Voice Group – where information gathered from the above approaches is collated and discussed by class/tutor and house representatives.
  • Pupils create a feedback video to share with the academy what has been discussed and the actions

These are systems that can be used to capture specific areas/agenda’s that we set, or purely to capture the pupil’s journey at Springfields (progress over time).