School Council

Our School Councillors’ are elected by their peers and these children meet with the Headteacher, and a Governor from the school to bring lots of ideas on how to improve our school from their class. We use this as a learning opportunity to develop our understanding of the Democracy British Value.

The School Council gives the children at Walsh Memorial C of E Infant School a ‘voice’. They will be given the opportunity to share their opinions and ideas on things that matter to them. All children will be involved by contributing their suggestions during class based circle time. These suggestions will be discussed at School Council meetings. The School Councillors will feedback from these meetings to their class at the next circle time.  All School Councillors wear a badge so children remember who they are.

Why have a School Council?

The idea of a school council is to encourage children to develop their confidence and responsibility as a ‘citizen’ of the school. They will be encouraged to recognise what they like and dislike, what is fair and unfair and what is right and wrong. They will take part in discussions on issues that interest them. The children will begin to gain a greater insight into being part of a group, class, school, family and community. They will investigate how to make choices that improve their health and well-being.

A very important aspect of school council meetings is being able to listen to other people and respect their views, beliefs and feelings. They will gain the skills needed to work co-operatively with others. We also hope being a member of the School Council will help the children take more responsibility and help them realise they can play an active role in our school.

Although Walsh Memorial CE Infant School no longer qualifies to call itself an Eco School it remains firmly sympathetic to the principles and values. Eco means friendly to the environment. We should all help look after our environment and to help stop global warming we turn lights, TVs, ovens and computers off when we do not need them. We recycle our paper and take part in the RSPB’s Big Bird Watch each year. We keep our grounds litter free and try to encourage our local community to be litter free too.

Some highlights from last year –

• We chose to donate our Harvest collection to support our local community and donated to Farnham Food bank (but the children wanted to support local and far away communities).
• Adopting a WWF animal, asked for by one of our Year 2’s and School Council chose a White Rhino.
• Our school council have been looking at how to keep all our children safe and thinking of ways to remind all children who to talk to if they feel sad or worried.
• We wrote to Matt Furniss (our Local Councillor) to ask about the updated plans for a new crossing near school and were delighted when he replied.

This term we are continuing our focus on Road Safety and how we can keep safe when we are walking to school.