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 2018 impacting on classes, lessons and lunch hours. School dinner menus where extensively scrutinized and adjusted to meet pupils needs resulting in less waste, this is on-going and will be reviewed twice a year. School uniforms have been on the agenda for over a year with School Blazers and ties being looked at for lower school hopefully starting in January 2019. Damage accountability is still a huge issue that Councillors are discussing regularly and addressing by feeding back to their classes the exact cost of damage and where money could be used if pupils take more care with the building and equipment. Mr Whelan has taken an active part in meetings giving pupils a link to senior management about issues they feel impact their class, pupils have been mature and respectful of opinions of others and I can see they enjoy the discussions and feedback they have had from SLT both during meetings and after.

School Council UK To help children and young people to have a greater say over matters that affect their school and wider lives

BBC News - School Council