Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we have been waiting for. We are the change that we seek. – Barack Obama
Welcome to our School Council page! Our School Council has representatives from FS2 – Year 6. We meet on a regular basis and our School Council members gather the opinions and ideas of their class and share them at the meetings, feedback meeting actions and support with any projects. We are looking forward to having another successful year, working hard on lots of different projects across school and representing the viewpoints of our classmates. Please check in regularly to get an update of what we have been up to!
School Council Consultation
The School Council looks to the school’s Mission Statement for its values.
The School Council is about:
- Learning to work together
- Learning about democracy
- Learning how to play a positive role in our Community
The School Council’s job is to involve everyone:
- Providing a link between children and adults working in school
- Finding out about things children want to change
- Coming up with ways to make things better
- Putting those ideas into action
- Seeing what works (evaluating).
School Council 2025-2026
Our School Council members have had a busy start to the year. They have already presented to the whole school, supporting their peers in learning more about the Protected Characteristics and what children can do if they feel worried or sad. They have ensured that every classroom and the communal areas have a Protected Characteristics poster visible too.
We have been collecting pupil voice regarding a few questions and queries this year. Our first question was ‘Should parents be allowed to use their phones on the playground at drop off and collection?’. The children asked this question to their classes and came back with some of the following answers-
“I think that it is fine for them to be on if they aren’t on all the time, as it could be important.”
“I think it is fine in case it is a work call or an emergency.”
“It is ok because they could have left work early to pick you up from school.”
“No, because if they are on a call and they say hi to the person on the phone, that means that they are ignoring their child.”
“Angry, she doesn’t listen to me.”
“I feel annoyed.”
School Council 2024-2025
Hello this is school council.
We are all school council because we want to make the school an even better place to be and be able to share new ideas. We have got lots of great ideas and will listen to the other members of our classes to think about how we can help.
Please come and tell any school council members, or use our class suggestion boxes about any suggestions you would like to make us as school council look into.
During our first School Council meeting, the children brought their class suggestion boxes and shared ideas their peers had had on how to further improve the school. There were lots of wonderful ideas, such as ways in which to earn more house points, improvements for sports day events, more books for classes and the library, improving the year 5 and 6 toilets, more lunchtime clubs and equipment for playtime.
The children chose the following priorities for the school this year.
- To improve equipment at playtimes.
- To plan and organise creative competitions to earn house points.
- To have more lunch time clubs in school.
We will share our journey towards improving the school throughout the year.
For Children’s Mental Health Week this year, the School Council decided to invite the children to take part in a competition to design a new poster to display around the school to remind everyone to look after their mental health. We had some fantastic entries and the winners will be displayed around school.
School Council 2023 – 2024
Our School Council worked hard to develop our schools understanding of the Protected Characteristics. They have shared lots of wonderful ideas and have created a PowerPoint for the school, as well as a catchy song and dance to support their peers in remembering the characteristics, based on the acronym DR RAMPS. They designed their own DR RAMPS character and voted for their favourite. After completing the PowerPoint, the School Council did a wonderful job of sharing lots of information about 7 of the Protected Characteristics in a whole school assembly, with a catchy song to help the children to remember them all. They discussed similarities and differences between people, what Equality and Discrimination mean, as well as how our school rules help us to provide a supportive environment for one another. We now have posters to display around school with DR RAMPS on to help children to name 7 of the characteristics too!
Pupil Voice
Every term the School Council bring their suggestion boxes together to discuss improvements that their class have come up with.
Previously, one of our KS2 children had suggested that every class has a mindfulness box, full of items that would help children to feel happy and calm. We fundraised during Mental Health Week, where we raised a total of £264 by having a ‘Wear Green’ day. This money has gone towards providing every class with a box full of mindfulness colouring, play dough, fidget toys, lavender bags, soft toys and squeezy balls. Our youngest member of the School Council did a fantastic job of sharing all of the resources out and every class is now able to access these resources throughout the day.
Promoting British Values
The school council have worked together to promote British Values across school. They have designed posters to display in classrooms and have also created their own presentation which they shared during assembly.
The Mayor of Wetherby
Previously, our school councillors had the amazing opportunity to meet our Mayor, to ask him questions and even to try on his Mayor chain. This visit supported our learning about the British Values, about democracy as the Mayor is voted for and elected, about Individual Liberty – having the freedom of choice and how the Mayor can support this in our town and so much more! It was an exciting morning to welcome such an important member of our local community into our school. Thank you to our Mayor of Wetherby for visiting St Joseph’s! We look forward to welcoming you back to our school in the future.
