✨ Empowering Voices: Celebrating a Year of Student Leadership and Impact
This academic year has again demonstrated the incredible talent, growth and leadership skills of our students from Year 7 through to Year 12.
For the fourth consecutive year, I have had the privilege of working with dedicated students, elected by their peers – to fulfil the role of either Diversity Ambassador and Student Council representative.
At Maidstone Grammar School for Girls, we aim to foster student voice, support representative democracy and empower all our students to develop the skills to become the leaders of tomorrow.
In January, we accompanied a group of Student Council, Diversity Ambassadors and some History A Level students to Westminster for a guided visit, a meeting with our local MP Helen Grant followed by a discussion on the workings of democracy and the role of elected members of Parliament.
The Equality Act (2010) continues to guide much of the work we do to raise awareness and engage in meaningful discussions to create equity and belonging in our school environment.
Over the course of the academic year the Student Council has focused its attention on how to improve the school environment after conducting a Student Voice exercise in March which received 460 responses across the year groups. On the back of this the Student Council delivered assemblies to all year groups with a key message on access to basic hygiene facilities. By working with the Site Team and Business Manager, we are working to replace soap dispensers and hand dryers. We have also added extra rubbish bins and are also regularly supplying the toilet blocks with free period products. This week we have also produced some canvases as part of our Daisy Campaign to raise awareness about period poverty – they will be installed in the toilet blocks to make the space a little more colourful and remind students that providing free period products continues to be a priority.
The Diversity Ambassadors kicked off the academic year with a celebration of Black History Month in October, followed by International Day of Disability in December, Chinese New Year in February, International Women’s Day and Neurodiversity Week in March, Multicultural Day in April, Pride in June and South Asian Heritage Month in July.
Finally, following on from student voice and specifically a Student Forum during the previous autumn on microaggressions, Mrs Manders (Teacher of Drama) wrote, with some dedicated students, a series of scripts. These were each filmed and focussed on the topics of ‘body image & body shaming’, ‘discussing braids in the context of race’ and ‘gender identity in the context of shared spaces’.
On their last RISE Day of the academic year, all students across Year 7 through to Year 10 completed a session on Microaggressions to explore our choice of language, intention and impact on others. The feedback from the students, collated by all the teachers who ran the session, will be used next year by the new team of Diversity Ambassadors to inform our decisions and create events that are meaningful and respond to the school community’s voice.
It continues to be a privilege to be working with all these students and I am looking forward to the next academic year.
Please complete the attached Google Form to give us some feedback too. Diversity, Equity & Inclusion – Student Council – school based projects 2024-25 – parents/carers survey
Mrs N Lawrence, Assistant Headteacher for Key Stage 3 – Student Voice & EDI Lead