The theme of the 2017 edition of Enabling Education Review will be:
“Young People’s Views of Inclusive Education”
The deadline for submitting first drafts of articles is 31 July 2017. This year, as the title suggests, we want articles written by children and young people. Contact info@eenet.org.uk with any questions or to receive a full information pack on how to facilitate writing sessions.
Details of suggested topics and how to submit articles are provided below.
- Why have we chosen this topic?
In 2017, EENET is celebrating 20 years of promoting inclusive education and sharing experiences from around the world. Learners, particularly children and young people, are at the centre of inclusive education, but often their opinions are ignored. Therefore, EER 6 will focus on the voices of young learners. We want to know about their experiences of inclusive schools, classrooms or other education settings. We also want to see their visions and ideas for how to make education environments more inclusive.
- What could children/young people submit?
We are looking for both written submissions and drawings from children and young people under the age of 25 years.
A written submission could be in the style of an article or news report. We also welcome poems, songs, short fictional stories or even posters.
We would also like to receive lots of different drawings, including cartoon strips that tell a story, and maps showing the inclusive or non-inclusive parts of a school.
If you are a teacher, parent, youth worker or other person working with children and young people in education, you may need to provide them with some encouragement and support to write or draw a submission for EENET. However, it is important that you give the children and young people freedom to express their opinions. We have written a brief guide to help you with this.
- What could children/young people write or draw about?
We would like to know about children and young people’s experiences of inclusive education and/or their ideas about making education more inclusive. This is a very broad subject.
The following are some ideas for topics:
They could write about themselves, e.g.:
- What makes you feel happy, safe or welcome in school?
- Who is your favourite adult at school? Why?
- When did you do something at school that made you proud of yourself?
- When do you feel left out of things at school?
- What are your dreams and hopes for the future? How does education fit into these?
They could write about their experiences of school or another educational experience, e.g.:
- Describe a good teacher.
- What makes your school inclusive or accessible?
- Are there issues related to food, water, sanitation, or getting to and from school?
- Who helps you and who helps your teachers?
- Who are your friends at school? Why are they your friends?
- What is difficult about going to school? Why?
- What is fun about going to school? Why?
- Do you have a school council in your school? What do they do?
- Do you get consulted about what happens in your school?
- Describe something that happened in school that made you laugh.
They could write about inclusive education, e.g.:
- Begin or end your article with “For me, inclusion means…”
- Have you been involved in any campaigns to help children who are not in school to get into education?
- Are sports or arts important to including people in school? Why?
- What stops you from going to school?
- Do you get to talk about how inclusive your school is? If so, explain.
They could write about their education experiences outside of school:
- Do you learn outside of school? If so, explain.
- What makes you really annoyed, frustrated or sad about education/school?
- Who are your heroes/heroines? Why?
Or they could write about another personal experience of education.
If children and young people choose to write fictional stories (something made up, for instance describing their ideal school or a perfect lesson), please write a note on the submission to tell us that it is fictional.
- How can you submit a written piece or drawing?
Format – Written pieces can be submitted electronically as a Word document, or as plain text in an email message. Our email is info@eenet.org.uk. We also accept submissions via private message through our Facebook page.
Handwritten documents can be submitted. You can send original handwritten documents to us via post, or they can be scanned/photographed and emailed to us.
We are also happy to accept audio or video recordings, if the young authors want to read aloud what they have written and record it on a camera or phone. You can email us the audio/video file if it is small enough, or use a file-sharing site. Contact us if you need advice about sending us an audio or video file. Please ensure that the child and his/her parents/carers are aware that we may want to share the audio or video file on our website. If they agree, they should give you written permission for this.
Please ensure you include the name, age, grade, school and contact details for every child or young person who submits something.
Length – Written pieces should be a maximum of 500 words. Photos and/or drawings can be sent to accompany the written piece.
Editing – Written pieces will be edited by EENET’s editors. Also a team of young people from different countries will be asked to read and comment on the written pieces and drawings.
Photos – If you are sending photographs or scans of drawings to accompany written pieces, the images must be high resolution (the jpeg file should be at least 1mb in size). We may want to publish your photos in EER or on our website, so if the photos show people’s faces, please ensure you get permission from these people (or their parents/carers). We have included a simple permission form that you can adapt if you want to.
Drawings – We need to ensure that drawings will reproduce clearly in EER. Please ensure that children and young people use black lines and bold colours for their drawings. Drawings in light pencil unfortunately will not reproduce clearly and we won’t be able to publish them.
Deadlines – the first deadline for draft submissions of articles is 31 July 2017. But we welcome submissions as soon as possible so we can spread the editing workload. We will review all written pieces and work with the authors to edit them if necessary, and we will review and select drawings to publish.
Selection – please note that we might not publish all of the written pieces and drawings we receive as we are limited by the length of the publication. We try to ensure that the final selection includes submissions:
- from a variety of countries/regions
- about a range of different issues
- from authors/artists of different ages, abilities and educational levels.
Written pieces and drawings that are not selected for publication in EER may instead be published on EENET’s website (www.eenet.org.uk) or used on EENET’s Facebook page.
Queries – if you have any questions, please email info@eenet.org.uk.
Postal address – if you want to send a written piece or drawing in hard copy or as an audio recording (e.g. on CD), please send to:
EENET, PO Box 422, Hyde, Cheshire, SK14 9DT, UKly