Author: Asher

The school council at Richard Coates School played a major role in promoting their anti-bullying campaign that led to them recieving this award. They felt it was very important to get the whole school involved as it is an issue that effects everyone.

An Anti-bullying week was organised and included a variety of activities from tutorials and quizzes to a performance demonstrating the efects of cyber-bullying.

The school is also very proud of its Peer Supporters where the older pupils help the younger pupils settle into the school. They also let the pupils know that they are always there if they ever need someone to talk to about bullying, or any other concerns.

“The uptake for Peer Supporter training is huge. Pupils are proud of their school and want to help everyone to continue to feel safe and happy.”

The award from Northumberland county council was presented to Daniel Hadfield, school council member.

Daisy

Primary school pupils from Budbrooke got the chance to speak to a man whilst he was hundreds of miles away in outer space, and then even better this week they got to see him in person and ask him anything they wanted, from what he eats to what he wears.

Better still this fantastic opportunity all started with a simple idea at a school council meeting. Then the pupils submitted an application to the NASA radio project, and from this they became one of four schools in the world able to talk to Mr Richard Garriott, space tourist.

The pupils had a fantastic time talking to Mr Garriott and it proves that school councils can make things happen far beyond the classroom.

Daisy

I got a call on Friday from a someone I hadn’t heard from for years. She and I used to volunteer doing youth work together. It turns out she’s now working on a BBC kids show called M.I. High (Official BBC mini-site; Wikipedia page).  The school they film in had one of our posters up. The producer was about to rip it down, as they “didn’t have clearance to use it”, when Hannah said she thought she knew how to get it cleared. She made a quick call to me  and now the kids at Saint Hope’s (spies or otherwise) get the benefit of a great poster promoting their school council! As it turned out the poster in question was one her brother had commissioned when he was working for School Councils UK!

Asher

I recently went to a pupil voice conference, with a variety of workshops run by school council members in the area. I was surprised by one school, who presented their version of pupil voice that wasn’t a school council. The workshop started with a dramatic statement by the head of the primary school stating that their school didn’t have a council because they wanted “to involve all the school.”  I was intrigued… Has she not heard of class councils, or year councils?!  The students then went to on to explain (in a speech most definitely written by the headmistress)  how they approach student voice, wait for it, this is very innovative…… The headmistress and deputy head go to each class once a week and ask if they have any problems and there is also a suggestion box which if you submit your problem, you get a cosy one-to-one with the head to discuss the issue.

It really does seem to hark back to the school dark ages, and shows us that pupil voice still is very neglected in many schools. This school’s attitude really seemed to be: who needs pupil voice when the headmistress can run the whole shebang and not have those pesky pupils putting their ideas across and and getting in the teachers’ way of organising the school.

Vicky