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What is a school council?
Our school council is a formal group of pupils within St Joseph's who are elected by our peers to represent them and their views.
Who are our school councillors?
Class One: Archie and Freya
Class Two: Blake, Eva and Lola
Class Three: Daniella and Jaiden
Class Four: Jessica, Harry and Mia
Class Five: Ryan and Orion
Why have a school council?
We think there are lots of reasons, here are a few;
- Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) says that children and young people should have a say in decisions that affect their lives. A school council can provide a meaningful way in which pupils can voice their opinions and have their views taken into account in decisions which impact upon them.
- Our school council elections help us to learn about British values and how our country's democracy works.
- It is an important and useful way for our school to provide leadership and development opportunities for our pupils.
- Within the school curriculum, one of the key areas making up the 'Learning for Life and Work' theme is active participation. The curriculum requires that young people are provided with opportunities to participate in school and society. School councils are an excellent way in which to increase participation, teaching young people about democracy, local and global citizenship and accountability.
- Our school council allows us to work with other groups such as Parent Voice, Mini Vinnies, charities and the Parish to develop our school e.g. We helped secure funding to improve our school grounds. We also gathered ideas from our fellow pupils about how the children wanted the money spent. We often work with the Mini Vinnies group within school to help with chartable work for our community.
We also help to interview new staff, meet with the governors and headteacher and also help our classmates have a voice which is very important to us.
We recently visited Rotherham Town Hall to meet the Mayor and our local Borough Councillors. We learned all about local democracy, the role of the Mayor and Councillors. We also got to sit in the council chamber where council meetings take place! We also learned about the history of our town.
We got to ask the Mayor lots of questions about her role within the council.
