Our School Council

Our School Council

At Aston Rowant C of E Primary School, we have a group of children who form our School Council every year. Every child from Year 1 to Year 6 has the opportunity to put themselves forward to be a school councillor.

These children are responsible for:

• Working with their classes to discuss any current issues, concerns or developments
• Feeding back relevant information after School Council meetings to their class and class teacher
• Selecting a charity for our school to support
• Organising events to help raise money for the nominated charity
• Making informed decisions about our school, eg: new playground equipment
• Inviting visitors into our school when appropriate
• Working in and communicating with the local community, eg: advertising events, visiting local businesses

We value the role of the School Council in our school as we believe it allows children:

• To develop confidence and interpersonal skills
• To see our Christian values in practise around the school
• To be actively involved in decision making that will have a direct impact on their community
• To work with a range of people, eg: adults from local businesses
• To begin to understand how a democracy means working fairly
• To have a voice within their local community
• To reflect on the needs of their school and chosen charity

Selection process:

At the beginning of each school year each class will discuss the role of the School Councillor and will agree on a set of criteria that the ideal candidate should try and meet, eg: a fair representative for their class, a good friend, someone who regularly demonstrates our core Christian values, confident to talk in front of others. Any children who are interested in taking on this role then have the opportunity to prepare and present a short pitch to their class explaining why they would make a good Class Council representative. The rest of the class then vote for the person they feel is most suitable for the role. We ask the children to be considerate of each other; if they have had the opportunity to take on this role before then they allow others to also have the opportunity.

Charities:

The school council decide on and lead our charitable work in school. The charities we are support are both local and global.

This year we are supporting an international charity Tear Fund. We chose them as we wanted to do something for Covid19 on a global scale and we also wanted to support refuges from Afghanistan.

Our charity in 2020/21 was our local  Children's air ambulance which is based in Princes Risborough.

Here are some of the other charities we support:

Sport Relief

Comic Relief

Children in Need

Jeans for Genes 

Water Aid

Bledlow Hearing Dog Centre

We also support an education project in the Gambia. We raise funds in school to buy essentials for school pupils which are boxed up and sent to the school. These items might include stationary, mosquito nets and toiletries. We also raise funds to pay for a young boy's education each year. This is Emran and he writes to us to tell us all about his time in school.

Every term we hold a whole school council meeting, led by School Council members and Year 6 children. The questions are decided on by the School Council and discussed in small groups. The feedback is given to Mrs France and the Governors.