From student voice to student agency in the IB Diploma Programme

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About this episode

Arissa Roy is an IB Diploma Programme alumna, youth activist, and UNESCO youth representative who founded a global education-equity movement at 14. In this episode of IB Unplugged she makes the case that schools often mistake the presence of student voice for the practice of it, and shows what it takes to move young people from speaking to genuinely building the systems that shape their learning.

Episode chapters

4:40 What student voice looks like when a school gets it right
6:04 The Peace Council: making space for difficult conversations
13:51 From inviting students to speak to inviting them to build
14:04 Three shifts that move a school beyond tokenism
18:10 Closing the loop: speaking, listening, and acting
27:38 Rethinking exams and the purpose of school
34:47 Where agency comes alive: CAS, TOK, and service
50:59 The “issue plus gift” formula for student changemaking

The gap between hearing students and heeding them

Most schools believe in student voice. They run councils, gather feedback, and invite students to speak. The trouble is that the presence of student voice is easily mistaken for the practice of it.

Arissa Roy has seen both sides. An IB Diploma Programme alumna and youth activist, she describes a common assumption in schools: that once young people are in the room, they have been heard. Her argument is that genuine agency begins where many schools stop. It is one thing to invite students to speak. It is a different thing to invite them to build.

“There’s just an assumption that as long as young people are in the room, then we’re fine, like then we’ve heard them.”

From speaking to building

The shift Roy describes is from consultation to co-design. She points to the Peace Council she helped set up at her United World College, where students from more than 80 countries were living alongside one another as conflicts unfolded around the world. Rather than avoid the hard conversations, the students proposed a supported space to have them, learning how to ask difficult questions without alienating their friends. Listening, she suggests, is the first step of any peacebuilding.

What made it work was that the school said yes, and then showed up. Teachers attended the evening sessions even though they fell outside the school day. In that moment the students were no longer only an audience. They were co-authors of something their community needed.

Three conditions for genuine agency

Moving from tokenism to genuine participation, Roy argues, rests on three things. The first is sustainable, permanent positions for young people, with real decision-making power, rather than a single conference or a one-off consultation. The second is equity of access: the knowledge, terminology, and preparation students need to contribute meaningfully. She recalls being overwhelmed at the UN at 15, unfamiliar with the language of the room, and points to preparation and mentorship, in both directions between adults and young people, as what makes a seat at the table usable.

The third is support, so that students feel safe enough to ask for help in the first place. Roy is clear that this is not only a student challenge. Teachers need training, time, and support of their own, and change has to happen at several levels at once for any of it to last.

Closing the loop

A seat at the table only counts if the loop closes: students speak, someone listens, and something visibly changes. The last step is the hardest, because it commits a school to acting, and to having the structures in place to act while decisions are still open.

Not every idea can proceed, and Roy is realistic about budgets and practicalities. What matters is how a school handles the answer. For a young person raising an idea for the first time, a flat refusal can read as “they don’t want my ideas.” Communicating what changed, what could not, and why keeps a first attempt from becoming a last one.

Why relationships matter more than grades

The teachers who shaped Roy most noticed how she showed up, not only how she scored. She describes a head of school who ate dinner with students and asked, in plain terms, how they were finding the school, and teachers who checked in when something seemed off. That kind of attention, she suggests, is where teaching becomes powerful.

“Educating a child is not just about teaching them math, but really supporting them in their learning and growth process. That’s when the teaching can become even more powerful.”

Agency beyond the exam hall

Roy is candid that her own IB DP experience sometimes narrowed into how to score well on a given paper rather than a love of the subject, and she would like to see the weight placed on exams reduced. That is her view as an alumna, offered as a challenge rather than a verdict. Where agency came alive for her was in the parts of the programme that gave her room to act: a TOK teacher who invited her to develop and share her own ideas, and a CAS service placement at a seniors’ home that turned into a lasting friendship. Those, she says, were the moments that showed her she could create ripple effects of change.

A simple formula for changemaking

For teachers wondering how to help students act on what they care about, Roy offers a formula: issue plus gift. Take a cause a student cares about, combine it with something they are good at, whether that is public speaking, art, sport, or baking, and you have the start of something meaningful to them and useful to others. She pairs it with a belief in the ripple effect, that small acts matter even when their impact is not immediately visible, and a call for collaboration over working in silos, drawing on her own work gathering youth input for the UNESCO-led effort to shape education beyond 2030.

About Arissa Roy

Arissa Roy is an IB Diploma Programme alumna and a United World Colleges graduate from Toronto, Canada. She founded the education-equity movement Project Power Global at 14 and represents Europe and North America on the UNESCO SDG4 Youth and Student Network, serving as a UN youth delegate to the ECOSOC Youth Forum. She is also a TEDx speaker and a children’s-book author.

You can hear the full conversation with Arissa Roy, including how she set up the Peace Council at her United World College and what she has learned from bringing youth voice into UN and UNESCO policy rooms, in this episode of IB Unplugged. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

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