At this year’s Student Voice Practitioners Conference hosted at Kings College London, Dr Marta Almeida Hill and Francesca Plom from Outreach & Widening Participation presented on their strategies for turning student voice into meaningful action.
As the University of Kent takes meaningful steps toward becoming a truly student-centric institution, we are committed to ensuring that student contributions genuinely shape our work. No longer is student feedback a box-ticking exercise – we are embedding student voice into the core of everything we do.
Adapting Professor Laura Lundy’s model of child voice to a widening participation context offers a powerful framework for ensuring that underrepresented and marginalized young people are meaningfully included in decisions that affect their educational journey. Originally developed to support children’s rights in line with Article 12 of the UNCRC, Lundy’s model – focusing on Space, Voice, Audience, and Influence – we believe it can be extended to higher education outreach and access initiatives. Though named “model of child voice” it is a model that can be applied to “Student Voice” more widely.
The presentation showcased that by creating intentional spaces for dialogue, actively seeking and valuing diverse student voices, ensuring those voices are heard by decision-makers, and enabling them to have a tangible impact, institutions can move beyond tokenism toward genuine partnership. This adaptation helps to democratise access, reshape power dynamics, and design more responsive and inclusive pathways into higher education.
The presentation also highlighted how the university has developed authentic partnerships within its own context, including the creation of our Widening Participation Student Advisory Panel, which played a key role in shaping our Access and Participation Plan. It also reflected on our longstanding collaboration with student ambassadors in co-creating content that is both relevant and impactful.
References
Lundy, L. (2007). ‘“Voice” is Not Enough: Conceptualising Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child’. British Educational Research Journal, 33(6), 927-942.