BLOG - What young people think of our research outputs, on exclusions and absences from school

Welcome Parisa

We are very grateful that Parisa Shirazi, the Senior Policy, Projects and Participation Officer at Children in Scotland has kindly written a blog reflecting on her experience of working with SCADR. 

Hearing children's opinions

One of the best things about my job is seeing children and young people feel valued and enjoy sharing their opinion on a topic and this project with Dr Robert Porter and Professor Morag Treanor was no different!

As Robert explained before the sessions:

It is critical that we hear directly from young people about how they think we should collect, use, and communicate about any data. This is even more important when we are using their data, or doing research to improve policy or practice relating to children and young people. 

We had the opportunity to work in-person with a group of s2-s6 pupils at Beath High School and a group of young people from across Scotland online.

We discussed the young people’s thoughts and reflections on SCADR’s research about exclusions and absences from school, including:

• what the young people thought should happen with this research and
• how it could be used to change young people’s experiences of education for the better,
• how research could be shared effectively and engagingly with young people and
• their thoughts on how data about children and young people should be collected.

Positive outputs

The project team were delighted with how the young people engaged with these topics with thoughtfulness, enthusiasm and good humour.

Following the final session, Morag explained:

The insights we gained from the young people involved in this project were incredibly useful in helping us communicate our research findings, and will continue to be used to inform projects and processes in relation to SCADR’s use of children’s data. Our research is more relevant, easier to talk about, and better informed after listening to and incorporating their views and perspectives -thank you all so much.

It is difficult to do justice to the children and young people's input in a short blog, but I hope by sharing this blog and carrying out these types of sessions with children and young people, it will help to provide an additional level to administrative data research and provide further evidence to help change policy to improve the lives of children and young people across Scotland. 

Online webinar

We are grateful that Parisa has agreed to present about this experience, at our ADR Scotland Lunchtime Webinar on 23 April at 1pm.

For anyone wishing to join us, please request the Teams login link by emailing scadr@ed.ac.uk