St Anne’s students are “Rocket Fuel”

Students at St. Anne’s Catholic School and Sixth Form College, Southampton are being given the opportunity to lead aspects of their school through the Learn to lead programme. The students are choosing aspects of their school life they want to improve and working as teams to bring in those changes, all on their own!

James Rouse, assistant headteacher, explains: “The key to the programme is the principle of holarchy. In a traditional hierarchy the people at the top make all the decisions. In a holarchy everyone feels a part of a community, has a say, and has the opportunity to develop their own leadership style and skill-set. The reason the programme is successful is because the students decide what they want to focus on. It comes from them and is driven by them. It develops the skills that employers want to see such as team-leading, consensus-building and communication skills.”

The school has already put the principles into action as the team launching the programme to the school is made up of students from a range of years. The entire school spent an afternoon before Christmas looking at their idea of an ‘ideal school’ and what needs to happen to move towards that.

Mrs Murtagh, headteacher says: “I’m very excited to see what our pupils come up with. To quote a recent Ofsted inspector: ‘Your students are rocket-fuel’. We firmly believe that and know our pupils will rise to the challenge.”

More developments in the programme can be found at the project’s twitter account: @l2lstannes