Giving young people a voice

A town council is trying to make its work more relevant to young people – by consulting student advisors. Alison Purdy saw the system in operation.

Beth Scrivens knows what makes a good student advisor to a council. Since she took on the role, advising Ringwood town council’s recreation, leisure and open spaces committee, she has successfully secured £1,000 funding and council backing for an under-18s disco in the Hampshire town. She is now looking for a suitable place to locate it and if all goes to plan, Beth hopes the nightspot will be open for business sometime this summer.

“If you walk around Ringwood on a weekend, you see a lot of under-18s hanging around because they have nowhere to go. This will give them something to do,” she says.

Beth is one of eight sixth form students from Ringwood school (pictured) who have been appointed to advise the town council on issues ranging from local facilities for young people to planning consent and public order strategies. Two advisors sit on each of the council’s four committees where they represent the views of all young people in the town, not just those who attend their school.

Corrina Groves has experience of speaking on youth issues having served on the national youth parliament as the member for the New Forest and Test Valley South. She says: “In lots of places, some people who are quite high up do not want to know about young people and think you only get your say once you turn 18. I want to make sure that my voice, and those of other young people, are heard.”

The architect of the student advisor scheme is town clerk Terry Simpson. He says many of the town’s councillors have grown-up children who have left home, and they felt out of touch with the views of young people.

Future views
They asked him to come up with a way to allow young people to get involved in local government. Due to age restrictions, under-18s are unable to serve as councillors but, as Mr Simpson discovered, there is no legal bar to them acting as advisors. He began to work with Ringwood school to select a group of students who the school felt were able to fulfil the role. And as far as he knows, Ringwood is the only council in the country to have students advising members and speaking up for young people’s views.

“Young people are the future of Ringwood and it is right that councillors do something for the town’s future,” says Mr Simpson. “What we have done is get young people in to tell us what we ought to be doing for them now and in the future.”

Since starting the job in September, the eight students have attended monthly committee meetings as well as monthly gatherings of the full council.

“At meetings we can participate and share our views with the rest of the councillors,” says Harriet King, advisor to the planning, town and environment committee. “We then relate what has happened back to the general school population. All of us sit on our year group school council and so we feed back the information via our councils. It’s a link between the school and the council. There are 1,600 people in our school. That is a huge chunk of people to miss out their views.”

Feeling wanted
As well as helping to build the young people’s confidence it also makes them feel they have a stake in the town in which they live.

“It feels like we are actually wanted in Ringwood (pictured right) and that we are not just here because our parents are,” says Beth.

James Fullick, advisor to the policy and finance committee agrees. “Usually in a formal or controlled situation, young people are often ignored. But as advisors we know that we are putting forward our views and that we are actually being listened to,” he says.

The newcomers have been broadly accepted by the town’s 14 councillors who often help the students get to grips with the complex terminology of local government.

“The first meeting I went to I did not say anything but now I just join in. The councillors made us feel really welcome. They are happy to hear what we have to say,” says Beth. “It can be very difficult to understand everything that goes on and sometimes it goes completely over your head but we can ask and we get help.”

The initiative has been built on the long-standing relationship between the school and the council which has already seen Ringwood named as a Fairtrade town.

“It is because we are in Ringwood and have such a receptive council that this scheme has got off the ground in the first place,” says assistant head teacher Margaret Olive. “There has never been a time in education when students have had a better opportunity to put forward their views and it is part of growing up and going out into the wider world to be able to put forward those views. It is about how young people approach teachers and the wider community and I think that is what our job is all about.”

The students now hope that schools around the country will follow their example and forge links with their local council as a way of giving young people a real say in how their area is run.