The Small Steps

Digital course

🎓 Free online course for teachers

Civic budgets for students

School participatory budgeting is one of the most popular teaching methods for building civic attitudes in children from an early age. It is practised in New York, Arizona, Boston, Paris, Berlin, Kraków, Warsaw, Gdańsk, Sofia, Skalitsa, Estonia and Portugal.

With a small budget at their disposal, students change their school environment according to the needs they identify and the solutions they find. They decide for themselves, through a vote, which projects go ahead, and they see the result of their own ballot. In this way they take part in democratic processes from an early age and get to be civically active in the environment closest to them – their school.

Blinds so that presentations are easier to see, a rest corner on the top floor, a 3D printer for projects, soap dispensers in the toilets, a mural of the school’s patron on the wall – students have clear and concrete ideas about what their school needs and how their place can change for the better. Making those decisions on their own, they stand in elections, vote, and become active citizens.

The course introduces the basics of the process and guides you from planning to implementation across 8 steps. It contains applied guidance and templates you can adapt and use in your own school. On completion you receive a certificate.

The course was developed by an international consortium under the “School Participatory Budgeting — a tool for democracy in school” project, by the organisations Field of Dialogue and Social Laboratory (Poland), BiPart (Italy), The Small Steps (Bulgaria) and the Regional Ministry of Education of Cantabria (Spain).

Click to explore the course QR code to the course Open on a phone

Who it is for

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Teachers who want to give their students a real say in school decisions.

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School leadership teams considering a student budget.

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Facilitators and coordinators of student participation.

How the course works

  1. Start here

    The button above takes you to the platform. There are no fees and no deadline — take the course whenever it suits you.

  2. Eight steps

    From planning to implementation, with applied guidance and templates you can download and adapt for your own school. You can stop and pick up later.

  3. A certificate at the end

    Once you complete the course, the platform tells you how to claim your certificate.

More materials

The “Heroes of Change” handbooks, the “Decide together” rules and the rest of the materials are gathered on the Resources page.