What is the school council?

The school council is a group of pupils who are elected to represent the views of all pupils and to improve their school.  Each year, every class elects two representatives to be members of the school council.  The councillors are selected through a democratic voting process which is linked to British Values. 

The council will then meet to elect officers such as: 

Chair

Secretary

Treasurer

What does the school council do?

Our school council does a number of things:

• meets to discuss and sort out problems;
• holds regular meetings; 
• run class councils;
• trains new councillors;
• manage their budget;
• evaluate and review pupil opinion;
• act as a link between the staff and pupils.

Children and staff have welcomed newly elected MP, Sarah Smith and School Council were able to ask lots of questions about how Sarah can help improve Rishton and Great Harwood to make it better for children.

School Council had a meeting with Sara Britcliffe MP to raise the following issues which children in their classes had identified as being a concern:

Litter and dog poo on the streets

Sara said that there are a lot of clean ups going on (such as the one our children had been part of) and that dog wardens are monitoring and enforcing fines as best they can.

Lack of things to do in Rishton for children their age and lack of equipment on the playgrounds

Sara agreed with this and is hoping to look into a new park for the families of Rishton. She was particularly interested in the land next to school and is going away to find out who owns this and if there are ways it can be developed.

Anti-social behaviour by some teenagers and other issues such as vaping

Sara advised children to remind families to report any issues as these are all logged and influence police patrols in areas where there are problems. She is involved with Operation Centurion which is a scheme to get more foot patrols and will recommend this for Rishton. There is a campaign to try and ban disposable vapes which will help with the litter aspect and hopes that campaigns will highlight it is damgerous.

Traffic issues around school and parking issues in front of houses

Sara is going away to see if there is any land in the area which could be used for cars to park on.

School Council are looking forward to organising a special event for our mums and other special ladies in our lives. Y6 have created a wonderful poster and we look forward to planning some special activities in each class.

 We have enjoyed our first meeting together and have already planned what we would like to do this term:

1. Check if our Class Charter ( rules we agreed together) is being followed - is there anything our class needs to work on? 
2. Asking the children in our class what they like/don’t like in maths and English

3) Fundraising for new books in our library 

A very big thank you to our school council of 2022-23 for all their hard work! It was lovely to see the candidates for this year's election and great to see everyone received a number of votes from their classmates.

 Thank you for supporting Comic Relief where we raised £125 for this worthwhile charity. The children have been finding out how money raised can help a lot of needy people. 

Tower of London School’s Coronation Competition

KS2 school council members have been assisting in a competition that includes almost 2,000 schools taking part to design a collaborative design for a special bench. Their design could be one of fifteen to be chosen and recreated  by an artist from Wild in Art to be displayed at the Tower of London for the coronation of King Charles III. The children have worked together to consider many aspects of what their bench could represent and have worked brilliantly as a team. We can’t wait to see what happens.

School Council met to decide the theme for Children in Need which was PJs or bright clothes/ spots. Each class talked about where the money goes which we raised. 

School Council decided that their first project of this year would be to get the childrens' views on playtimes, lunchtimes and extra curricular activities. They consulted their class and then reported their findings at the next meeting.  Mr Ferguson very kindly attended this meeting to listen to what the children had to say and clarified things for them as needed.

As a result of this feedback:

Mr Ferguson is asking Coach Al to put a programme together so that children know which sports are available each day and this will be displayed.

Mr Ferguson will put a plan together of activities that will be available on the yard each week.

Each class will be able to choose something to add to the stock of activities.

Adults supervising playtimes will be asked to teach the children new games.

Each class chose candidates to run for election. 

On voting day, children had to choose 2 candidates and post their slip in the ballot box.

Votes were counted and checked by year 6.

The two children with the most votes in each class were announced as our new school council members.