Student Leadership Accreditation

Mr Penney has launched the 'Student Leadership Accreditation' and is offering Year 9 and 10 students the opportunity to work towards a recognised award system of Accreditation for Leadership skills. This links in with many extra-curricular clubs, including Duke of Edinburgh and our ASDAN CoPE qualification.

The Student Leadership Accreditation (SLA) is an innovative way of recognising students’ leadership skills and the impact they have in the classroom, across the school and in the wider community.

The SLA was developed by students, for students, in key partnership with teachers, HE and FE institutions and employers. Together they identified ten key skills that young people need to be successful leaders, and grouped them into three core themes:

Developing myself
Contributing to my community
Working with others

Introduction

These skills and themes are grouped into a self-assessment framework, which can be adapted to reflect the schools context and ethos. Students assess themselves against this framework and then actively seek opportunities to advance themselves and gather evidence to showcase their new skills in a portfolio.

Students can work towards the SLA at three levels: Bronze, Silver and Gold. Unlike other awards, students peer assess each other’s portfolios as well as being externally moderated, ensuring the process both reinforces and rewards meaningful student leadership.

What are the benefits of the SLA?

The SLA was developed ‘by students, for students’, and it is the focus on the individual that makes the award so popular across many schools. As well as the prestige of accreditation, the process that students go through in becoming accredited is of great benefit.

This process encourages students to:

Critically self-reflect on their own skills as leaders
Work collaboratively to plan how they will meet the criteria and evidence it
Organise and structure their evidence
Peer assess others’ work against criteria
Aspire to take on increasingly challenging leadership responsibilities

Many of the skills students use in this process, reinforce key learning competences in the classroom. The award itself provides valuable evidence of students’ all round achievements when applying for colleges, universities or jobs.

What activities can be accredited?

There is no set of prescribed activities that are worthy of accreditation. Providing the students meet the criteria, as assessed by their peers (and staff initially), Bronze, Silver and Gold awards can be achieved.

There are a number of student impact programmes led generically in most schools, other educational establishments and some bespoke Carr Hill activities. The SLA is not an alternative to these, but rather provides formal acknowledgment of the impact that these activities have for the students who are already engaged in them.

Examples include:

School Council
Students as Learning Partners
Peer Mentoring
Student Department Representatives
Sports and Games
Charity / Volunteer Work
Duke of Edinburgh Award
Sports Leaders
ASDAN
The Prince’s Trust
Leadership in Extra-Curricular Clubs

Fundraising ideas include: raffles, bake sales, hampers for the local community, Food Bank collections, anti-bullying events amongst other things. You could also help out at evening events, Open Evening or at the Dance Display, and get recognition for this. For more information initially see Mr Penney, but we are hoping to have a team of staff working on this shortly to make it a success.