Safer Schools. Safer Communities.

Listening to young people before problems escalate

Listening to young people before problems escalate

We give young people a trusted way to share concerns, helping schools and communities identify risks earlier and prevent harm before it happens.

Every community wants its children to be safe.

Too often, warning signs of violence, exploitation, intimidation and anti-social behaviour are seen by young people long before they are seen by adults.

The Student Voice exists to close that gap.

We provide young people with a trusted way to share concerns, experiences and emerging issues affecting their schools, neighbourhoods and communities. By helping councils, schools and local partners understand what young people are seeing and experiencing, we support earlier action, stronger community engagement and more effective prevention.

Our mission is simple: listen sooner, understand earlier and help prevent harm before it happens.

Designed to remove the fear, stigma and barriers often associated with speaking up, The Student Voice gives children and young people a safe way to share how they feel about the places they spend time. Using simple, child-friendly interactive maps, young people can highlight areas where they feel safe, identify places that cause concern and share experiences that may otherwise go unheard.

Whether it is concerns on the journey to school, incidents in local parks, issues in the community or experiences within school itself, young people can quickly and anonymously share what they are seeing and experiencing. This real-time insight helps schools and local partners identify emerging risks earlier, understand where support is needed most and take informed action to improve safety.

From bullying, child-on-child abuse and online harms to mental health, wellbeing and community safety concerns, The Student Voice helps organisations move from reacting to problems after they occur to preventing harm before it happens. By listening directly to young people, schools and communities can make better decisions, build safer environments and ensure every child feels heard.

What is The Student Voice

What our schools say

How it works

The Student Voice in action

Contextual safeguarding within school

Young people share

Students confidentially or anonymously share concerns through their school platform about the places they spend time using our child-friendly, interactive maps.

    • At school
    • On the way to and from school
    • In local parks
    • At home
    • Online/Social Media
Contextual safeguarding within surrounding areas

School picks up reports and insights

Real-time insight shows emerging issues, hotspots and trends so schools and partners can understand what young people are seeing and experiencing.

  • Identifying emerging risks
  • Spot trends and patterns
  • Share insight across partners
Contextual safeguarding at home and online

Earlier action happens

With better insight, schools and communities can take informed action to improve safety and prevent harm before problems escalate.

  • Safe spaces
  • Targeted support
  • Stronger prevention and early intervention

Real Stories & Impact

South Warwickshire

“Were getting rich community-based intelligence from young people, which is really starting to help us shape and inform our service delivery, with themes coming through from young people around places and spaces that they dont feel particularly safe, and intelligence on certain premises around the sale of illegal and illicit substances which is really useful. We really want to continue to build on that.”

Jon Barnett, Community Safety Team Leader

London Borough of Havering

“With this data combined with our insight across the LA, we knew we could build a culture of information sharing and early intervention to continually drive improvement across the borough”

Trevor Cook, Assistant Director of Education Services

Warwick District Council

“Community protection teams work hard to support all our residents to enjoy the district when they are out and about. We know that our young people can be out and about in larger groups, or at particular times of the day, and this platform allows us to hear directly from them, so that we know where and when to target our support. I’m really hopeful that this collaborative approach will go a long way to improving the sense of safety and wellbeing in our district.”

Marianne Rolfe, Head of Community Protection

TESTIMONIALS

Hear it from our school and council leaders

“It allows us to capture the voice of the child and look at the full contextual risks around them, whether that’s in school or in the wider community. The platform maps enabled us to highlight areas of child-on-child abuse on the school site and address those concerns directly. It helps me look strategically at patterns and trends across year groups.”

Sam Godfrey, Director of Safeguarding at Stowe Valley Trust

“I can share directly with the Youth Intervention Team, youth clubs, police, youth centres, youth workers, and schools anything contextual to our school (parks, roads or lanes in Rugby).”

Mandy Milsom, Assistant Head and DSL at Rugby Free Secondary School

“With this data combined with our insight across the LA, we knew we could build a culture of information sharing and early intervention to continually drive improvement across the borough”

Trevor Cook, Assistant Director of Education Services at The London Borough Of Havering

“It’s really important to understand the lived experience of those who live in our district. However, one of the big gaps for us was engagement with young people. To have information fed back through to us on what young people are experiencing in schools and the community is very powerful and will help shape our service delivery.”

Jon Barnett, Community Safety Team Leader at Warwick District Council

“What has been really successful is students being able to engage, make suggestions and feel included as part of our school.

It ticks the contextual safeguarding box whether its issues inside or outside of school, and allows us to quickly intervene with situations, whether it’s something that has occurred online or on our buses.

Students are starting to share things we wouldn’t have heard of, or what we would have only felt the impact of through their behaviour in school. Now they feel like they have a place where they can vent their frustrations….it allows us to react faster and more effectively to our responsibilities around addressing peer-on-peer issues.”

Michael Few, Assistant Head and DSL at Kineton High School

“Respect underpins all we do at Bishop’s and the introduction of The Student Voice will enable us to hear, respond and respect the voice of all students, particularly those who are less comfortable talking directly to an adult. This discreet and accessible reporting tool will ensure that we hear the voice of every child, so that we may continue to provide the safest and happiest of environments for the whole school community.”

Jemima Edney, Deputy Head and DSL at Bishop Wordsworth’s Grammar School

“We have a culture of vigilance and protection which supports every member of our school community. It is of the utmost importance to us that all the individuals in our school community feel cared for and supported, so they can achieve their very best potential. This online reporting system will ensure any concerns or disclosures are dealt with promptly and effectively.”

Caroline Smith, Deputy Head and DSL at Wyvern St Edmund's

“The Student Voice has been a fantastic addition to our student portal, allowing our students to flag up any issues in their infancy.

It has been lovely to receive some really positive feedback for certain members of teaching staff too! The reporting tool makes it easy to run reports and to look at trends, not only in our school community but in the wider community too.

Our approach to contextual safeguarding has really improved and we have been able to pass on any wider community concerns to the neighbouring school in our town. I would highly recommend The Student Voice. It really is an impressive piece of software and the students love it as it is extremely user friendly.”

Rachel Rees, Senior Deputy Head Pastoral at Haberdashers’ Monmouth

“We have continually strived to cultivate a culture that stays current with the way our young people communicate. We want to ensure that every voice within our school is heard, and every student is given the best opportunity to thrive.”

Kait Weston, Deputy Head (Pastoral), Millfield School

“We are delighted to expand our collaboration with The Student Voice. It’s brilliant to offer our pupils more ways to share information with staff about how safe they feel at school and in the community. This initiative underscores our commitment to fostering an environment where our students can thrive and feel safe.”

Louis Donald, Director of Safeguarding, Creative Education Trust

“This is a fantastic resource – child-friendly and simple to use. It covers in-school, surrounding areas and home…It creates a proactive approach to reporting and understands the barriers children face in trusting the reporting system.”

Ann Marie Christian, Safeguarding and Child Protection Expert

“The first step to protecting students is listening to their experiences of where they feel safe and unsafe at school. The Student Voice tool supports schools to put Contextual Safeguarding into action.”

Dr Jenny Lloyd, Senior Research Fellow, Contextual Safeguarding Network at Durham University

“There are aspects of this platform that we can see making an immediate impact, such as the hotspot data tool where real physical locations of potential risks can be identified not just in school but across the wider community. We are excited to tackle student safeguarding as a community concern, not just a school concern.”

Jason Howard, Quality Assurance Director, Creative Education Trust.

“I’m thrilled to share the fantastic success story of our student reporting platform here at Orchard Primary School. Our students have felt a real ownership of the system, and feel valued, listened to and grown up using it. The Student Voice is very child-friendly and intuitive and has given us great insight into what is happening in our young learner’s lives. Everyone has picked it up very quickly and our students are much more confident using it than questionnaires. We’re so proud of our students who have had the courage to open up about what is worrying them regarding all sorts of issues, as well as grateful for all the positive feedback we’ve had about staff and the school. It’s also been a really effective education piece, as we’ve been able to feedback to the kids on how to use it responsibly and encourage them to play an active role in keeping our community safe.”

Danielle Fisher, DSL at Orchard Primary, part of South Pennine Academies

“We have been struggling to engage with a particular student for quite a few months. We launched The Student Voice this week, promoting it to our students as a safe space for them to voice anything that is concerning them and that we want to hear from them. We are very pleased to say that within the first few days, the student used the system to articulate their worries and what support they feel could help them.

The Student Voice has provided an invaluable safe space for our students to feel comfortable to communicate with us.”

Amy Eagleton, Designated Safeguarding Lead at Moor End Academy

“The Student Voice has had an extremely positive effect on TASIS, The American International School in England, and my life as a DSL. We can prioritise feedback and intercept incidents effectively, assisting in our commitment to the safeguarding and wellbeing of all children that attend our school.”

Jason Tait, Director of Pastoral Care and Designated Safeguarding Lead, TASIS

Our Story

Why we built The Student Voice

“Severe bullying made me leave full time education at the age of 13. Having experienced the effects of this firsthand drives my passion for improving the life trajectories of young people, and encouraging them to speak up and get support.”

Stephen Willoughby

Co-Founder & CEO

Stephen and Jason MAT Excellence Awards

“The world has changed immeasurably. Student concerns are changing and evolving along with society, which is why we must encourage young people to share their experiences online, at school, and in our communities, and collaborate with them to implement a preventative response.”

Jason Tait

Co-Founder & active Designated Safeguarding Lead

The Student Voice began with a simple belief. No young person’s future should be defined by the challenges they face today.

For over 20 years, Jason has worked with children in education and safeguarding roles. During that time, he saw the pressures facing young people evolve rapidly, from bullying and online harms to wider community safety concerns. Time and again, he saw students carrying important information long before adults became aware. Many wanted to speak up, but feared being labelled, worried about repercussions, found reporting processes confusing or overwhelming, or lacked confidence that action would be taken. Stephen understood the issue from a different perspective. After leaving full-time education at the age of 13 following severe bullying, he became passionate about ensuring other young people had the confidence and opportunity to speak up and access support.

Despite different experiences, they arrived at the same question: What if young people had a trusted way to speak up — and adults knew how to listen?

Since 2018, what began as an idea has grown into a trusted platform supporting more than 60,000 students across schools and communities. Today, we help schools, councils and community partners listen earlier, understand emerging concerns and take action before problems escalate.

Safe communities safeguard futures.