School Council

A school council does a number of things:

• The school council meets every two weeks with the head teacher - to discuss and sort out problems. These may include school lunches, behaviour or ideas for fundraising events. The children can make decisions about what is important to them and are proud of the changes they have made. 
• Members of the school council will be responsible for carrying out the ideas that have been agreed, such as planning discos, writing part of the behaviour curriculum, choosing songs for assembly and suggesting improvements.

Each year, every class will normally elect two representatives to be members of the school council.

The council will then meet to vote on who should be:

A good school council is one that represents the views of all students and gets things done.

Many schools have councils, but they are not all successful. These are some things that make a council effective:

• Regular meetings
• A council that is not too big
• Class/Form councils that meet regularly
• Good communication between representatives and their class
• Training for school council members
• Smaller groups (subcommittees) working on specific events or issues
• A bank account or budget (however small)
• Annual evaluations

Many school councils just talk.

Good school councils get things done.  For example at Sexton’s Manor School we have an effective school council who :

• discuss ideas and issues that children write down and place in their classroom suggestion boxes, e.g new playground equipment or lunchtime arrangements
• share the minutes of the meetings by feeding back to their classes and their teachers
• speak in assemblies
• request further meetings with Mrs Ratcliffe (headteacher) as they feel is necessary.
• make suggestions and carry out ideas to support local charities, such as the local Foodbank
• write to local businesses and MP's
• make links with others