The Student Council is an elected group of students who work together to represent the pupils of our school. From Year 2 to Year 6, each class has two representatives, one boy and one girl. Children volunteer for the role, they give a short election speech to their class explaining why they should be on the Student Council. The class then privately vote. This process results in an enthusiastic and committed Student Council.
Meetings are usually held every fortnight during lunchtime. Children have the opportunity to raise any issues that they or their fellow pupils may be concerned about. They also feedback any suggestions from their class suggestion box. The Student Council then discuss the most important issue and work on this. This often involves the children liaising with Mrs Sinclair and the school governors. This can include organising ideas for fundraising, whole school events or spending Student Council funds to improve our school.
Each year the children take on a long term goal to assist the school. This time it is to ‘encourage everybody to look after our environment and ourselves.’
Miss Wilberforce
Junior Road Safety Officers
Once again this year our Student Council includes two Junior Road Safety Officers, one from Year 5 and one from Year 6. We aim to use this role to raise awareness of road safety to pupils, parents and the local community throughout the year. The children will choose their own initiatives in order to promote different road safety themes.
Parking Pledge
The Student Council during our first term this academic year decided to remind parents and carers of the importance of parking responsibly around school. We circulated our ‘St Paul’s Parking Pledge’ along with helpful posters to raise awareness and to ensure children are able to travel to and from school safely each day.
Seafarer Donations
To support those in our wider community, the Student Council chose to support the Parish appeal for Seafarers. Seafarers spend many months away from their homes and loved ones, therefore the Student Council worked together to encourage pupils, parents and carers to donate items towards Christmas boxes for the Seafarers.
The Student Council were delighted to see many generous donations brought into school for the Parish Show Box Appeal for Seafarers!
Anti-Bullying Week – Change Starts With Us
Using Student Council funds, we were able to purchase official merchandise to help raise awareness of Anti-bullying week. Alongside their learning in class all children received an Anti-bullying sticker and KS2 children were given an anti-bullying wristband to reinforce the message of ‘Change starts with us’.
Step Up and Stay Safe Competition
The focus of JRSO pupils this term was to make pupils aware of how to stay safe during darker nights. The Student Council spoke in assembly during Road Safety week about ways to ‘step up and stay safe’ as darker nights approach before introducing their whole school competition. For pupils who wished to enter, they needed to design a poster to illustrate how we can ‘step up and stay safe’ near and on roads.
Children’s Mental Health Week – Lunchtime Clubs
As part of ‘Children’s Mental Health Week’ the Student Council tried out lunchtime clubs for KS2 with the theme of ‘taking time out to relax and unwind’. Children were able to sign up to various days including lego group, mindfulness colouring and origami. It was a great success! Next half term the Student Council hope to run this club permanently during lunchtime once a week!
Recycling – Looking After the Environment
Across this term the Student Council have ensured that each classroom has a recycling box that Student Councillors can empty into our larger school paper recycling bag each week. When explaining to pupils why we are wanting to recycle and reuse as much paper as possible we were able to talk about other ways to help the environment and climate change through sharing two books inspired by Greta Thunberg. Later this term the Student Council will be exploring further ways to ensure St Paul’s are environmentally friendly!
