Reed's School on the importance of pupil feedback

Caroline St-Gallay, Deputy Head (Teaching & Learning) at Reed’s School in Surrey, on why seeking honest feedback on the teaching and learning experience is important for both pupil and school progress

Recently, I popped into my local coffee shop and bought a much-needed latte. Within three minutes of leaving, my phoned alerted me to an urgent message from the establishment: I needed to evaluate my experience. My latte was still too hot to sip, but my opinion was ‘important’ to them. In a world where we are asked to provide feedback on virtually everything we do, surely it would be bizarre if we did not ask our pupils to evaluate their lessons? 

When we first introduced our Pupil Questionnaire at Reed’s over a decade ago, it was met with a certain degree of scepticism. What do children know about pedagogy? Surely children don’t understand how to teach. Also, pupils don’t tend to think it’s cool to express delight at their schooling! Such reactions are understandable but can be mitigated by the type of questions asked. These should be about evaluating the learning and not rating their teachers. When done well, questionnaires have the valuable dual benefit of encouraging pupil reflection (metacognition or thinking about learning, as it is known in many schools) and helping teachers to do the same about their own practices. 

“Providing pupils with as many opportunities as possible to think about their own views helps them to shape their thoughts in a considered, mature way”

At Reed’s, Pupil Voice is paramount. Providing pupils with as many opportunities as possible to think about their own views and then express these in a welcoming forum helps them to form and shape their thoughts in a considered, mature way. This lays the groundwork for individuals to express themselves confidently and articulately. The skill of reflecting on your experience is fundamental in learning because, by reviewing how they learn, pupils can adjust their own approaches and become independent.

When, for instance, they are asked in their Pupil Questionnaire how often they are ‘encouraged to work collaboratively with others’ in tasks, that implicitly tells them that this is a crucial skill in life. We frequently carve out time in our curriculum for reflection points to encourage focused contemplation about learning and to also give each individual some ownership over their own school experience. 

Pupils also appreciate that, as a school, we are demonstrating our aspiration to perfect our teaching. We are signalling that we are not complacent. Shakespeare presented Hamlet as an over-thinker who acknowledged that: “Nothing is either good or bad but thinking makes it so”. Surely, he is right. We need to think about the good and the bad experiences in order to improve how things are done. If we live on autopilot, without evaluating, we will never improve. 

About six months after they leave Reed’s, we contact our former pupils with another questionnaire. In this we ask them for one last reflection about how well we prepared them for the next stage in their lives. We ask because we want to make sure that we are preparing them well – we need to know what is “good” and what is “bad”. We also ask because we want to remind them that, if we want progress, none of us should ever stop reflecting.

Reed’s School reeds.surrey.sch.uk

Further reading: Four really useful skills for life and work