Welcome to the Rothwell St Mary’s School Council page 2023/24.
Mrs Laycock and Mrs Penchion are really looking forward to be working with the council representatives and creating a strong pupil voice and developing a strong democratic ethos.
Rothwell St Mary’s, we pride ourselves on listening to the views and thoughts of the children and taking everything, they say with vigour. The children are valued and their opinion counts. A good solid School Council Policy will further embed the importance of the children’s voice.
What is a school council?
School Council is a formal group of pupils elected by their peers to represent them and their views. It is also an important way in which schools can provide meaningful leadership opportunities for pupils.
Our Aim
Our aim at Rothwell St Mary’s is to create and support a School Council that allows children to orchestrate their views and be leaders of their own ideas. Children will be able to share their views with the school council and their voice will be heard through them to adults within school.
We will change our candidates each year.
This year, we have kept our School Council and added extra members from each year group. This gives greater representation of the children across school and a larger pupil voice.
Our meetings will be every week on a Friday during Golden Assembly, we will meet in the dinner hall. Every second meeting (once a month) the children will have the opportunity to bring a guest councillor from their class to share their views also.
A diary will be sent out each year with dates on to help the children take ownership.
Teachers will set an area up a small area in the classroom for the children to use.
I would like to introduce you to our Chairperson, Vice Chairs, Secretary and Treasurer.
Coming soon
Every other week the children are able to bring an extra person from their class to add their views and thoughts on the things that are happening in school and on the projects that School Council are working on. This week our children worked together on thinking about our up and coming online workshop with the UK Parliament, they came up with some fantastic ideas. The children went back to their classes and have been given their own chance to have a democratic vote for the playground leaders. Playground leaders will have a very important job of making sure children are fully supported by their peers in the playground and they will help bring back the traditional playground games such as skipping and “What time is it Mr Wolf?” We wish all children good luck in their quest to become a Playground Leader you are all amazing.
Planning
Our vision for Rothwell St Mary’s School Council is whilst giving the whole school of children a voice through the voice of the representatives, we aim to teach children about democracy and the real UK Parliament so every other week we will be learning about all aspects of politics. if you would like to support your children further the UK parliament website has lots of interesting articles and virtual videos to watch.
Here are our plans for this half term…
Exciting news!!!
Firstly, I want to congratulate the children on the work from the School Council team so far, they put every effort into working as a team and the results are just empowering.
We know just how important it is for children to have a voice and our group of councillors are taking their job very seriously (quite rightly) and delivering messages to their classes and vice versa they are bringing the children’s voice back to council.
Where can I contribute?
There is an area in school dedicated to the pupils voice, if any child would like the opportunity to contribute they are able to do so here. The children can also look at the minutes from the meeting and find out information about our local MP’s and even read about the PM and the Houses of Parliament here. If children want to know what is in the news that week, they can keep up to date with our news articles.
See our Twitter page for the pictures.