Youth Participation in Education: Moving Young People from Consultation to Co-Creation

A student representative is invited to an education forum. 

Before attending, she speaks with other young people about their experiences. They discuss outdated teaching methods, limited career guidance, the pressure of examinations and how unprepared many students feel for life after graduation.

At the forum, she is given a few minutes to speak. The adults listen politely. Her contribution is acknowledged, and the meeting moves to the next item. Weeks later, she receives no feedback. She does not know whether her recommendations were discussed, rejected or forgotten. Nothing appears to change.

Technically, a young person participated. But did she have any influence?

This distinction sits at the centre of an increasingly important conversation about youth participation in education. Schools, governments and youth organizations are becoming more willing to consult young people. Surveys, youth councils, advisory panels and stakeholder meetings are now common features of education programs.

Yet consultation is not the same as co-creation. Consultation allows young people to respond to questions, priorities and solutions that adults have already defined. Co-creation brings young people into the process earlier. They help identify the problem, set priorities, design interventions, make decisions, implement activities and assess results.

One gives young people a chance to speak. The other gives them a meaningful role in shaping what happens.

A seat at the table is not enough

The 2026 UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Youth Report, Lead with Youth, reveals the scale of this gap.

While three in four countries report having processes through which young people are consulted, only around one in three has formal bodies for involving youth or students in education decision-making. UNESCO also found that only 20 per cent of surveyed youth and student organizations believed they were genuinely treated as partners.

These findings expose a weakness in how participation is often understood. Institutions may measure participation by counting how many young people attended an event, completed a survey or joined a committee.

These numbers show access, but they do not necessarily show influence.

A better set of questions would be: Were young people involved before the agenda was finalized?

Did they have access to the information needed to contribute?

Were their recommendations considered by people with decision-making authority?

Can they identify anything that changed because of their involvement?

These questions move the conversation from visibility to power.

Voice must lead somewhere

Laura Lundy’s influential framework for youth participation helps make this distinction practical. Drawing on children’s participation rights, Lundy argues that meaningful involvement requires four connected elements: space, voice, audience and influence.

Young people need a safe and inclusive opportunity to express their views. They may need support to communicate those views. Their contribution must reach someone with the responsibility to listen.

Most importantly, their views must be given appropriate consideration in the final outcome (Lundy, 2007).

Many institutions provide space and voice. They organize consultations, distribute questionnaires or appoint youth representatives.

The process becomes weaker at the point of audience and influence.

Who receives the young people’s recommendations?

What authority does that person have?

How are suggestions assessed?

What feedback is provided afterwards?

Without clear answers, youth voice can become performative. Young people are visible enough for an institution to claim inclusion, but not powerful enough to shape its direction. This does not mean every youth recommendation must be accepted. Institutions operate within legal, financial, academic and safeguarding responsibilities.

Meaningful participation requires honest boundaries, not the automatic approval of every suggestion. Respect is demonstrated when organizations explain which decisions are open, which are fixed, what changed and why certain recommendations could not be adopted.

Young people possess a form of expertise

One reason youth participation remains limited is the assumption that adults are the experts while young people are merely recipients of expertise. Adults certainly bring professional training, institutional memory and technical knowledge. But young people bring something equally necessary: direct experience of the system. Students know what it feels like to navigate the curriculum every day. They experience how education policies operate in real classrooms. They understand how their peers respond to technology, assessment pressure, economic uncertainty and changing career expectations. This is experiential knowledge.

Cook-Sather’s work on student voice argues that listening to students should involve recognizing them as legitimate contributors to educational knowledge not simply as sources of feedback on adult decisions (Cook-Sather, 2006).

Young people may not understand every policy constraint. Educators and program leaders may not fully understand every student's experience. Better decisions emerge when both forms of knowledge are brought together.

For example, an organization may design a career-readiness program based on labour-market research. Young people can help determine whether the program reflects the barriers they actually face. A school may develop a student well-being initiative. Learners can identify why existing support services feel inaccessible or disconnected from their reality. A university may revise a course. Students can help explain which learning activities produce understanding and which simply produce compliance. Co-creation does not remove professional expertise. It makes that expertise more responsive. The African participation gap The distance between formal representation and real influence is especially important within African education systems. Research from South Africa shows that strong policies supporting learner participation can coexist with limited student authority. School governing bodies may formally include learners, yet adult attitudes, institutional hierarchy and narrow definitions of student responsibility can restrict their contribution (Mncube, 2008). Research from Malawi reveals a related contradiction. Schools may teach democratic citizenship while continuing to operate through strongly hierarchical relationships in which adults retain nearly all meaningful authority. Students learn the language of participation but have few opportunities to practise it (Namphande et al., 2017). This matters because participation is itself an educational experience. Young people do not learn leadership only by reading about it. They learn by exercising judgement, working with others, managing disagreement and accepting responsibility for outcomes. An institution cannot convincingly teach democratic leadership while denying young people any experience of shared decision-making. Nor can a youth organization claim to develop leaders while treating participants only as programme beneficiaries. How tokenism becomes self-reinforcing Token participation can also create a damaging cycle. A student representative is appointed but given little authority. Other students notice that the representative cannot influence decisions, so they disengage from the process. Adults observe the low engagement and conclude that young people are uninterested, unreliable or unprepared for leadership. This becomes the justification for giving them even less responsibility. Research by Yu and Shay found that even a school with a progressive commitment to learner participation could reproduce forms of tokenism. Adult assumptions about young people’s competence weakened the legitimacy of learner representatives. When students saw that their representatives had little influence, trust in the participation structure declined (Yu & Shay, 2022). The problem is therefore not solved by adding a young person to a committee. Institutions must consider the mandate attached to that position, the preparation the representative receives and the visible connection between youth contribution and institutional action. Co-creation requires both power and preparation There is a danger in presenting co-creation as though adults should simply hand over responsibility without structure. Young people need preparation to contribute effectively. They may require support in research, communication, teamwork, budgeting, project planning, policy literacy and ethical decision-making. They also need access to information that allows them to understand the choices being discussed. This is where youth participation and project-based leadership development should meet. A 2024 systematic review of student co-creation found that participation takes different forms. Students may act as advisers during planning, co-researchers during implementation or reviewers during reflection. The depth of participation depends on the responsibility and decision-making authority attached to each role (Geurts et al., 2024). Co-creation can therefore be understood as a continuum. At one end, young people receive information. They may then be consulted or invited to provide feedback. Deeper participation involves partnership, shared decision-making and, in appropriate cases, youth-led action. Not every programme will reach the same level. But every organisation should be honest about where it sits on the continuum. What meaningful participation looks like In practical terms, young people can contribute to:

• identifying the problems a programme should address;

• developing research questions;

• shaping learning materials and programme activities;

• setting indicators for success;

• reviewing safeguarding and accessibility;

• deciding how resources should be prioritised;

• implementing projects;

• interpreting findings; and

• communicating results.
  

At the University of Cape Town, research into students co-creating open textbooks found that the process could shift aspects of the traditional power relationship between academics and students while strengthening agency, recognition and belonging (Cox & Masuku, 2023). This example is significant because students were not simply reacting to educational knowledge produced by others. They were participating in its creation. However, participation must also be inclusive. Organisations should avoid repeatedly selecting only the most confident, urban, highly educated or digitally connected young people. Girls and young women, rural youth, young people with disabilities, displaced learners, linguistic minorities and out-of-school youth may experience education differently and must be intentionally included. Young people who disagree with programme leaders also deserve space. Participation loses its meaning when only supportive voices are welcomed. From consultation to practical leadership At Domain Influence Leadership Institute, we believe that young people should move from potential to preparedness. That means helping them discover their identity and field of contribution, develop the inner and practical capacity required for influence, and deploy their abilities through meaningful action. The Unlock Leadership Lab is currently in its project phase. Participants are moving from learning and reflection into practical application. They are identifying challenges, exploring their causes, mapping opportunities, designing solutions and developing pilot initiatives within their chosen fields of impact. The curriculum is intentionally structured so that young people do not only discuss leadership. Through the Practical Impact Project, they practise problem identification, design thinking, planning, collaboration, field engagement and learning from feedback. This is what it means to lead with young people. It is not simply asking them what they think after decisions have been made. It is preparing them to examine real problems, contribute informed ideas and take responsibility for practical outcomes. Young people should not have to wait until adulthood or until someone gives them a formal title to begin shaping education and society. They need more than a seat at the table. They need the preparation, responsibility and opportunity to help build what comes next. References Cook-Sather, A. (2006). Sound, presence, and power: “Student voice” in educational research and reform. Curriculum Inquiry, 36(4), 359–390. doi:10.1111/j.1467-873X.2006.00363.x. Cox, G., & Masuku, B. (2023). Student co-creation of open textbooks: Reflections on power dynamics and building a sense of belonging in higher education. OTESSA Journal, 3(2), 1–15. Geurts, E. M. A., Reijs, R. P., Leenders, H. H. M., Jansen, M. W. J., & Hoebe, C. J. P. A.(2024). Co-creation and decision-making with students about teaching and learning: A systematic literature review. Journal of Educational Change, 25, 103–125. doi:10.1007/s10833-023-09481-x. Lundy, L. (2007). “Voice” is not enough: Conceptualizing Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. British Educational Research Journal, 33(6), 927–942. doi:10.1080/01411920701657033. Mncube, V. (2008). Democratization of education in South Africa: Issues of social justice and the voice of learners? South African Journal of Education, 28(1), 77–90. Namphande, P., Clarke, L., Farren, S., & McCully, A. (2017). Education for democratic citizenship in Malawian secondary schools: Balancing student voice and adult privilege. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 47(5), 703–721. doi:10.1080/03057925.2016.1278356. UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report. (2026). Lead with Youth: 2026 Youth Report. Yu, K., & Shay, C. (2022). Tokenism and barriers to genuine learner participation in school governance in one progressive South African girls’ high school. South African Journal of Education, 42(4). doi:10.15700/saje.v42n4a2115.