Making a Difference? The Voices of Children aged 10 and 11 - Years old: London 2012 and the Olympic Legacy

This paper has evolved out of a much larger doctoral thesis which looked specifically at the voices of year 6 children in the Olympic borough of Hackney in east London. Between the years of 2007 and 2010 the views and thoughts of 236 children from east London were analysed in relation to the Olympic legacy. This paper forms part of a longitudinal study which builds on the earlier doctoral research and the data analysed here emanates from an additional purposive sample of 40 children from 2015. The data collected contributes to an existing body of knowledge where the vast majority of the work on pupil voice in the UK has been concerned with the core subjects (Maths and English) and with secondary schooling. The re-emergence of pupil voice as a pedagogical approach to inform policy and curriculum design is encouraged throughout. In addition to giving young learners a voice this paper also adds something new to the debate surrounding Olympic legacy, as to date their inclusion has been conspicuously absent from such discussions. The data collected examines whether the optimism and positivity initially demonstrated by Hackney’s children in 2007 and 2010 has resulted in the legacy making a difference to the lives of the children or their families in 2015?