Pupil Voice
At St Michael's our Vision is to develop and nurture the Leaders of Tomorrow and the representative bodies at St Michaels' are highly valued. We really want our children to realise that their voice must be heard as they move into adulthood and the importance that their voice has in developing their society. The school councils teach the children the concepts of representation, democracy, debating, voting and public speaking
We have three councils: School Council (Years 3 - 6), Health Council (Years 2 - 6) and Environmental Council (Years 2 - 6). All three councils meet fortnightly, are chaired and minuted by Year 6 pupils. After each meeting children are asked to feed back to their classes using the minutes from the meeting.
Every class has an 'Ideas List' where they can record things they would like each respective Council to discuss and, from January 2020 each representative will record when each idea has been discussed (in response to our Pupil Voice Survey in December 2019).
The minutes of the school councils are presented to the governors each term and the governors follow their progress with great interest.
Below is a brief summary of the kinds of topic each Council have discussed:
School Council
- Playtimes and routines
- Road safety and parking near School
- Quality of school trips & suggest visitors to the School
- Use of school space and how we can make things better (eg outdoor classrooms)
- How could we help others outside school (eg Toilet Twinning)
- How we can make life better at St Michael’s
Environmental Council
- Reducing paper consumption and recycling in different ways around School
- Ways to reduce waste in School (eg water and heat)
- Planting flowers, trees and shrubs around School
- Check progress of environmental projects (eg recycling pens in Year 1, Year 2 turning off lights and the CARS group organising composting at playtimes)
- How we can support projects around Enfield
- How can we reduce plastic use at School, at home and locally.
Health Council
- Are there any visitors that council members would like to come to our School
- Mental health support in School (eg Time to Talk and mindfulness in classes)
- outdoor equipment & playgrounds (eg markings)
- School & packed lunches (making them more healthy)
- PE equipment (what there is and if we need anything more)
- After-school clubs (eg variety and target-year groups)
- Way in which St Michael’s children can get healthier