The legal right of children and young people to express their views and have those views acted upon in decision-making processes, which affect their lives has been formalised in Article 12 of the United Nation Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC 1989). Many researchers and organisations working with children and young people have engaged in developing mechanisms to ensure that the intentions of Article 12 are meaningfully realised. Ground breaking research in this field has been led by Laura Lundy, a co-director of the Centre for Children’s Rights, Professor of Children’s Rights at Queen’s University, Belfast, and Professor of Law at University College Cork. The Lundy model of child participation, first published in the global North in 2007, sought to provide a framework to guide researchers and practitioners in assisting child participants to realise their right to express their views and their right to have their views given due weight in the research process (Lundy 2007, 2018; Lundy & McEvoy 2012).

The Lundy model (Figure 1) is developed around four interlinking components for meaningful child participation. (1) ‘Space’: children must be given the opportunity to express a view in a safe and inclusive space, (2) ‘Voice’: children must be facilitated to express their views, (3) ‘Audience’: the view must be listened to, and (4) ‘Influence’: the view must be acted upon, as appropriate (Kennan, Brady & Forkan 2007; Lundy 2007, 2018).

The Lundy model has been adopted by the South African Department of Social Development in the National Child Participation Framework (Republic of South Africa [RSA] 2018). Child participation, in this framework document, is defined as ‘the active involvement of children in the decisions, processes, programmes and policies that affect their lives’ (RSA 2018:4). Significant to the context of this opinion piece, the document makes provision for the rights of younger children; they too need to be heard and participate in educational decisions that affect them (RSA 2018:31). While the importance of child participation is acknowledged in this document across a range of settings, including schools, reviews of the status of child participation in South Africa indicate a gap between the intent and actual implementation of the legal framework (Grant 2015; Grant & Kajee 2020; RSA 2018).

The literature denotes the relative absence of student voice in schools (Grant 2015; Gunter & Thomson 2007; Kalimbo 2018) and a ‘shrinking of opportunities for students to have a democratic voice in the educational process’ (Mitra & Gross 2009:525). Particularly in the global South, children’s ability to develop their voice and participate in decision-making processes is often constrained by ‘cultural norms and family customs’ (Duramy & Gal 2020:2).

Against this backdrop, and cognisant of the gap between policy and practice, we were interested to find out whether the Lundy model of child participation could be used as a framework to guide researchers and practitioners in assisting primary school learners to develop their voice and exert influence in matters concerning them in the context of the global South.

GADRA-Education, a Makhanda based non-governmental organisation (NGO), in the Eastern Cape, provided the study site. The stimulus for this continuing professional development (CPD) initiative was the pressure on GADRA to develop its strategic plan for the next 5-year period. At around the same time, we came across the Lundy model of child participation (Lundy 2007) and thought it might be a useful framework in ensuring that the voices of the young GADRA learners were heard and acted upon in the context of the strategic planning process.

The CPD initiative was designed as a small consultative participation process in which young children were invited to express their views on a one-time basis and for a specific issue (International Bureau for Children’s Rights [IBCR] 2018).

A total of 87 young learners (in the age range of 7–10 years) were asked to talk about their learning experiences at GADRA and were invited to share their opinions, concerns and suggestions with the facilitating GADRA teacher. Eight child participation consultations of between 25–35 min were held in June 2022. Children were organised into grade groups of no more than 12 per group. Five questions were posed. Questions were purposefully designed to scaffold from concrete to abstract thinking. Initially, the children were prompted to share their own understanding of the goals and intentions of GADRA. Subsequently, they were tasked to look around the classroom and identify all of the resources available. Following this, the children were encouraged to consider additional resources that they believed could or should be incorporated into the classrooms to enrich their learning experience. The children were then prompted to reflect on activities they engage in at GADRA. Finally, they were invited to share their thoughts on activities they would like to see added to the programme.

In line with the consultative participation process, learners’ views were listened to, but they did not participate in the development, planning or management of the strategic planning process (IBCR 2018). Eight feedback sessions were held with the same groups 4 months later following the adoption of GADRA’s new strategic plan by their Board. Learners were informed of the decisions taken, which reflected their opinions, concerns and suggestions. All 16 sessions were audio recorded and transcribed. Fieldnotes were also taken.

To ensure all ethical considerations were adhered to throughout the CPD initiative and the subsequent publication of the findings, a Memorandum of Understanding between GADRA Education and the two authors was signed. Permission was obtained to use the name of the NGO, but the names of learner-participants were anonymised.

Utilising the Lundy model of child participation most definitely enabled collaborative participation of the children in this GADRA CPD initiative. However, we acknowledge the limitations of the initiative and argue that it can be considered no more than a pilot study. This is because it involved a small project with children expressing their views on a one-time basis and for a specific purpose, rather than a consultative process on a continuous basis, ‘enabling children to have a greater influence on decisions made and project outcomes’ (IBCR 2018:21). Further deliberation around choices related to space, audience and the alternative ‘hat’ of the facilitating teacher is also necessary.

This opinion piece therefore surfaces the demand for sustained research projects, which are framed by the Lundy model of child participation. This pilot study also highlights a call for longer term initiatives that draw not only on consultative participation but which also experiment with collaborative participation and child-led participation (IBCR 2018). Recently, the model has been adopted as a framework for a collaborative research programme investigating how leadership can be developed in primary school learners. The research programme forms part of a Rhodes University Honours degree. Adult initiated, this interventionist programme experiments with collaborative learner participation, involving increased child participation and the establishment of partnerships ‘based on closer collaboration and active, recurring child participation’ (IBCR 2018:22).