School Council
What is a School Council?
A school council is a group of pupils elected by their fellow pupils to represent their opinions and raise issues with your headteacher and governors in the school. The school council can also take forward projects on behalf of the pupils, and be involved in planning and things like the School Development Plan, governing body meetings and interviewing staff.
To be effective, the school council must:
- Represent all pupils and include as many people as possible
- Take time to listen to all pupils and communicate their views
- Feed back to pupils about what happened about their views
- Make things happen – or explain why they can’t!
Top tips for an Effective School Council
Make sure that:
- elections are fair and open
- everyone is represented
- there are different ways for people to give their views (e.g. class time, suggestion boxes, questionnaires, focus groups…)
- training is in place
- there is effective communication so that people know what happens to their suggestions and ideas
- you see results!
Sefton Special School Council
This group is made up of the special schools within Sefton, the pupils meet once a term to socialise with other school council representatives and chat about things that they would like to do as a group. the group takes place in a different school and allows pupils to see what the other schools are like. pupils have designed their own group logo, created a name (SSSC) and started work on doing a talent competition
School Council
School council is a valuable part of school life with a lot of changes made in the last year. The biggest change has been the new school uniform which the school council have been championing and discussing for several years. It was a couple of years in planning with the council balloting pupils and parents on their views before and after new uniform. Many prototypes where looked at with pupils trying colourways, styles and fabrics so we considered best fit and sensory issues. The outcomes of the questionnaires after implementation have on the whole been very positive and we are really pleased that the School Council idea that started as a few pupils thoughts on uniform needing updating grew to such a positive roll out. All the pupils look smart and ready for learning when they enter school and when we have our meetings look great with school council badges on.
The school council has an impact on classes, lessons, lunch hour set up and school dinners. The menu for dinners has been revisited this year and with an input from School chefs and the office have adjusted weekly menu to appeal to pupils more and create less waste. The school main cook attended a meeting to listen to ideas and give feedback on possible menu changes explaining practicality and pricing issues. This has all been fed back to classes and keeps everyone up to date and involved.
How we treat and look after our school and appreciate it is discussed each meeting with pupils discussing their individual classes and whole school approach. Many good ideas have been discussed and once again an input from the office of how much everything costs on a breakdown sheet proved good for understanding within meetings and taken back to classes to put on agenda for class discussions. Pupils through this understand budgets which help with class planning and fundraising and looking after class environment and environmental issues turning of lights, paper waste etc.
Mr Whelan and the Senior Leadership Team (SLT) have attended meetings to listen to pupils views and ideas and given constructive feedback and implemented some suggestions that where viable. The school council pupils have been mature and respectful of each other’s opinion and I can see they enjoy their time at meeting and feeding back to their respective classes.
School council is run as a whole school initiative and pupils benefit from this listening to views from across school and cross referencing similar issues is important for staff who run meetings Miss Stone, Mrs Hutchinson and Mr Ellerton especially when it comes to behaviour and safety. The school council makes me extremely proud and I look forward to our next meeting.
Miss Stone
