Executive summary
Young people have the most to gain or lose from education system decision making and transformation. Around the world, students are rarely intentionally and meaningfully involved in the development and implementation of educational policies, school planning, and vision setting. Students are occasionally consulted during policy development, but they are rarely positioned as equal members on intergenerational leadership bodies, and few countries have national student councils. Student councils are more common at a school or education institution level, and even when countries have mandated schools to have student councils to harness the leadership of young people, these councils only weigh in on low-stakes decisions—such as organizing events—and not more high-stakes decision making like school-wide change and transformation. When students, educators, and their families work together to center young people’s voices in decision making and leadership, the whole community and education ecosystem benefits.
The Center for Universal Education (CUE) at the Brookings Institution has been collaborating with students, families, and educators around the world to understand how to build student consultation and intergenerational partnerships into decision making, and how to ensure education systems better serve students’ learning, development, and well-being. As part of ongoing work on youth agency in and through education, this policy brief makes a case for why student engagement is critical to policy and decision making in education systems and institutions. Three key findings were developed through the analysis of the policies on student voice in policy development and school governance in 10 countries, as well as mixed-methods research directly with students, their parents/ caregivers, and their educators. The audience for this policy brief is policymakers and education leaders across different levels—national, subnational, and school—who oversee student engagement in decision making. Another critical audience is civil society organizations that work in collaboration with schools and student and parent/caregiver councils. This policy brief complements a series of other briefs where the role of family, school, and community engagement in national education systems is analyzed across country contexts.
The research conducted directly with students, their families, and educators used an intergenerational approach where differences between age groups and positionalities, such as gender, socioeconomic status, and disability status, were examined to ensure that findings are relevant to a wide range of education actors and contribute to programs, policies, and practices that benefit young people. Over 9,580 young people aged 12 to 221 were surveyed across the 10 countries between 2022 and 2024. In seven of these countries, follow-up focus group conversations were held with students to unpack in greater detail their perspectives, hopes, and ideas for stronger family, school, and community partnerships. Research was conducted through a collaboration between civil society organizations and schools who are active members of CUE’s Family Engagement in Education Network and were keen to study student voice in decision making. When families, students, and learning institutions work in partnership, young people benefit academically, socially, and emotionally.
This policy brief starts with the conceptual framework for centering student voice in policy development and intergenerational research, followed by the research methodology and context, and concludes with recommendations.
Authors
Contributions
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Footnotes
- Although young children’s voices are also valuable to family, school, and community engagement research and practice, this research focused on adolescence—when young people become important mediators between their families and schools. The terms youth and students are used in this report to refer to the middle and secondary school age young people who were the focus of this research.
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