If there was such a thing as ‘School Improvement Plan Bingo’, the term student agency would be a banker on your bingo card. It is ubiquitous in modern education and has an uncanny knack of finding its way into so many school improvement plans...then cunningly reappearing year upon year. Why is that? Is it because it feels right to say we’re champions of student voice and choice? Is it because there’s a degree of ambiguity about what it actually means? Perhaps it’s simply that we don’t really know what it takes to get better at it. The likelihood is that it’s a combination of all the above. Whatever definition we settle on, we can probably agree that it involves a level of empowerment for young people, and that’s got to be a good thing that’s worthy of our sustained efforts. That’s the first two points covered, but how we do get better at it? Recently, a close friend of mine (also a school leader) bou...