St. Mary's School Councillors
Georgina (Chairperson) - Y6
Ava S (Vice chair) - Y6
Ava M (Secretary) - Y6
Jamie (Treasurer) - Y6
Lila (Class Rep) - Y6
Harry (Class Rep) - Y6
Sonny A - Y5
Sophia B - Y5
Leon - Y4
Ava - Y4
Sophia - Y3
Liam - Y3
Annabelle C - Y2
Luca - Y2
As school councillors, we have very important jobs. One such job involves talking to visitors of our school and explaining to them what our school is like. We were asked, as councillors, to meet with two visitors, who came to our school recently. They asked us lots of questions about how we are kept safe at school and how our voices are heard. We had lots to say (and feedback from the visitors was positive).
Our next act as school councillors is to set up and run a healthy tuck shop. We have been speaking to Mrs Hymers about this and have decided it will take place every Tuesday break time after the Easter holidays as a Summer Tuck Shop. There will be lots of healthy snacks on sale. Keep your eyes peeled for more information!
Furthermore, we have been given an extremely important responsibility; as leaders of pupil voice of our school, we have been asked by Mrs Talbot-Davies to do some fundraising. We are going to be raising money for CAFOD, who are supporting the children and young people of the Amazon rainforests, who are losing one football pitch of their rainforest every minute. As a council, we collaborated and decided we wanted to do something football related to raise awareness of the cause and to raise as much money as we can. We put together a presentation and presented it to the whole school in assembly. Below you can see what we are going to be doing, when it will take place and how you can help us.
Halle (Class rep) - Y6
Joel (Vice chair) - Y6
Joseph (Treasurer) - Y6
Jake (Class rep) - Y6
Ella (Chair) - Y6
Kate (Secretary) - Y6
Thomas - Y5
Chloe - Y5
Amelie - Y4
James - Y4
Maya - Y3
Roman - Y3
Olivia - Y2
Jake - Y2
We meet every couple of weeks to share ideas that we have had or that someone in our class has had. Children in each class can pass on their comments, concerns or ideas to their class' school council representatives and they will be discussed in our meetings.
During meetings, minutes are taken, typed up and filed so we have a record of the fantastic work we do!
Our Visit To Bankes' Park
On Friday 16th November, some members of our school council had their very first duty to fulfil. We walked up to Bankes' Park to witness the unveiling of a WWI memorial stone.
Behind the stone, there is a tree, which was planted around 4 years ago. The tree represents that which was in the middle of the battlefield during the Battle of Loos (September 1915). This battle took place between England and Germany. After weeks of battling in Loos, both sides retreated and the battle was not won by either army. Amazingly, the single tree in the centre of the battlefield remained standing. Soldiers took a piece of the tree with them as a sign of luck. This is why we have a tree at Bankes' Park today.
The stone was unveiled by the pupils from 3 different primary schools in Billinge. Our children then had the opportunity to feed the tree and were asked by Councillor Pearson to continue to care for the tree in years to come and to pass on the story of the battle and the tree's relevance to our lives today.
Interestingly, the tree that had been planted a few years ago is a beech tree and its leaves are a copper colour. This was to represent the copper discs that families were given when told of their family member's death in the war.
We really enjoyed unveiling the plaque on the stone and felt proud to represent our school at such an important occasion.
Our Suggestions
Recently, we were given very important jobs as school councillors: we had to go back to our classes and introduce ourselves as reps. Whilst we were there, we also had to ask children in our classes if they had any suggestions as to how St Mary's could become an even happier place. We met up again after this and shared our thoughts. Here are some of our suggestions:
Running a school tuck shop
Buying more footballs and hula hoops
Introducing new clubs (K-Nex club, board games club, photography club)
Having a crazy hair day
Buying school bikes for use on the playgrounds
Setting up 'Passport to the Park' again
Monkey bars on the school field
As you can see, our classes had lots of lovely ideas, which we fed back to the group during our most recent meeting. Miss Barnes has since held a meeting with Mrs Hymers about our suggestions and we are excited to say that a lot of them are being put into practice. Keep your eyes peeled for future developments!
Developments:
Since meeting up to share our ideas, further developments have been made that we would like to share with everyone. Firstly, our school will soon be running a Healthy Tuck Shop. Martyn from the Healthy Living Team came to speak to us about different kinds of healthy snacks we could include in our tuck shop. It will be set up in the next few weeks- keep your eyes peeled!
As a result of our meetings, we have also set up 'Passport to the park' again: this is working well in all classes and children are excited about their next trip to the park.
Also, we have recently been given new scooters; after saying we wanted bikes for the playground, Mrs Hymers agreed to buy some scooters, which each class takes turns in using. We love them and are really getting our hearts pumping when using them!
Furthermore, more playground equipment has been ordered as children have requested more balls, hoops and other equipment. This will be available for use in the near future.
Mrs Hymers has also agreed to hold a 'crazy hair day' in the coming weeks after listening to our views.
As you can see, being a member of the school council is vital as we feed back other people's ideas and suggestions. Our school listens to its pupils and takes on board suggestions as quickly as possible.
Our CAFOD fundraising plan