What is a School Council?

A group of children from Reception to Year 6 who have been voted by their class to represent their views and share their ideas. The School Council meet fortnightly and invite different members of staff to their meetings to discuss important issues and ideas.

Why have a School Council?

Its design promotes pupil leadership opportunities and enables children to develop valuable communication, organisation and debating skills. Our children relish the opportunity to become a greater part of school life, enjoy making their voices heard and seeing the results of their decisions.

What are the aims of the School Council?

• Represent all pupils and include as many people as possible.
• Take time to listen to all children and communicate their views.
• Feedback to children about what happened about their views.
• Action decisions that have been made or explain why they can’t happen.
• Within the School Councils's remit, they are responsible for choosing the charities we support. This is always a difficult decision, as there as so many worthy causes, but we ask that they agree to support only two charities in the Autumn Term and one each for the Spring and Summer Terms. We believe this gives our school community the opportunity to raise money for a number of charities, but we remain mindful of the additional costs and sometimes work that is required at home and school to sometimes achieve this. There may sometimes be exceptions to this where we have unexpected challenges and disasters in our world which we feel compelled to support.

What do the children think about the School Council?

• They think it is important that as Councillors, they represent everyone in our schools and carry forward ideas from their peers in class.
• They believe they should be an outstanding role model to others in the school.
• All think it is important to raise money for their school and school-supported charities.
• School Council is fun, and they enjoy coming to meetings to discuss important things.

How to we share the work we have done?

We have a weekly section in the newsletter where they share the good work they have done and also share tips with our families on how to support our environment. 

SECAT Pupil Advocates

We also have two Pupil Advocates who represent our school at regular SECAT Pupil Advocate meetings. The representatives from each of the six SECAT schools come together to discuss ideas to improve the well-being, education and enjoyment of life being a pupil in a SECAT school. 

The children all worked together to produce 'The Children and Young People's Wellbeing Charter.'