The Charter Student Leadership Conference

On Wednesday 5 October, a group of Lower Eighth pupils attended The Charter Student Leadership Conference hosted by Wimbledon High School and King’s College School.

The theme of the day was “Building Inclusive Communities” and was focused on developing interschool and pupil-led collaboration on projects that would help create these communities in our schools. With 23 different schools sending representatives, there was a real buzz about the place. Our pupils were there representing our Equality Societies – Pride Society, Feminist Society and REACH Society (Race, Ethnicity and Cultural Heritage).

The day opened with an address from pupils from the two hosting schools on the creation of their Charter in the wake of Everyone’s Invited and what they felt was their current roadmap to creating lasting change. They then handed over to Claire Harvey MBE who drew on her own life experiences as well her professional career to help attendees think about what it means to create change and how they could be effective leaders of change.

For the entirety of the day, pupils were put on tables with people from different schools. This was an important part of the second and third sessions that not only prompted pupils to consider and discuss what is needed to create inclusive communities and how we can best facilitate and protect civil discourse, but also invited them to work with the others on their tables to establish the beginnings of a project, which they could carry on after the conference.

Most excitingly, each of the group projects that was begun at the conference will now be assigned a staff mentor who will help the pupils continue their interschool communication and realise their projects before the attendees are reconvened in March to feedback on how their projects have gone and what they’ve managed to implement in their respective schools.

The artwork from the conference was created by Tom Oswald