School Council

Why do we have a School Council?

The School Council is an ideal opportunity for pupils to get more involved in the way the school is run; it is after all, their school. We respect and value the thoughts and opinions of our children and whilst it may not always be possible or practical to do everything they suggest, the children do have some fantastic ideas and are able to accept why some ideas may not work well for the school community.

The School Council benefits the whole school, pupils and teachers, because it provides opportunities for pupils to communicate their feelings as well as influence decisions that are made within school.

Councillors develop skills such as confidence, communication and negotiation. It is the responsibility of each Councillor to ensure that they express both their own views and the views of all the other pupils they represent.

Each representative is elected by their classmates at the beginning of the school year after a short presentation explaining why they should be elected. This develops children’s understanding of one of British values: democracy. They also understand that with democracy comes responsibility.

What have we achieved?

We reviewed our school dinner system and concluded that the children wanted more options. As a result, the menu was reviewed and the children can now choose from main meal, vegetarian, Jacket Potato or pasta each day. In addition, we now have a fantastic salad bar.

The School Council were also influential in collecting ideas to revamp playtimes and lunch times – they even presented their findings to the PTA. The children chose some fantastic markings for our playground.

The children also looked at incentives for improving attendance. They came up with some great ideas including McDonalds, trip to the cinema and a bouncy castle to name a few.

We visited the Town Hall!

We held one of our meetings in the Town Hall Chambers. During our visit, we met the mayor and asked him lots of questions about the town’s council and compared this to our own meetings. We learned a lot about the history of the council and the mayor even stayed for our meeting.