Our School Council
Working in Solidarity for the Common Good
Serve one another with the gifts you have received.
Peter 4:8-11
Love one another, contribute to the needs of others, live peaceably with all. Romans 12: 9-18
Our School Councillors 2024-2025
Year 1. Kamso and Rosie
Year 2. Zoe and Osiovie
Year 3. Ajax and Alice
Year 4. Isabelle and Phoebe
Year 5. Malaika and Flynn
Year 6. Adi and Logan
Sarhana and Isabel
Eva and Sarani
Hadley and Nicola
What is the school council?
Our school council is a group of pupils who represent the views of all children across the school, and give them the opportunity to make their voices heard and feel part of our school community.
We help to make changes and improvements, to make the school a nicer place for everyone.
Our School council has representatives from each year group .We listen and make decisions to improve our school. We can ask questions of our school leaders and help to fill in the gaps that they don’t see.
We act as role models and help the children in our school to keep our school values and five caring c’s and develop into good citizens.
We organise fundraising events for charities and find ways to support our local community and protect the environment.
What makes a good school councillor?
A School Councillor needs to be able to:
- speak out
- take their role seriously
- put across good ideas
- care for others
- be a good role model who can be trusted
- be reliable
- keep to the subject
- show enthusiasm
How to become a school councillor
At St Simon’s every class from years 1-6 chooses two representatives to be members of the school council.
•Voting for council members takes place at the beginning of the school year.
•Before they are voted for, nominees have to give a speech to their class explaining why they want to be on the council.
What makes a good school councillor? Hanoc
What will our school council do?
The school council will hold regular meetings to discuss ways in which we can improve our school.
The Councillors from each year group will present the views of their classmates.
They will provide feedback in a number of ways:
- through the school website
- in class discussions and assemblies
- using the School Council noticeboard. The school council also meet with the school governors to discuss their plans for the year ahead.
What the school council could change?
There are many projects and aspects of school life that the School Council could get involved with such as:
- Lunchtimes/Playtimes
- Areas around school e.g. cloakrooms, toilets
- Equipment for our playground
- ICT equipment/suggest apps for iPads
- School environment – Litter – Recycling
- Raising money for charity
- Improving our classrooms
- Helping to organise special events/competitions
- Helping shape our curriculum
- Helping to build networks to support our local community
How can pupils contribute their ideas?
If you would like to put your ideas forward to the school council:
• Speak to a school council representative.
• Post your ideas in the suggestion box which or hand them to your class councillor.
A School Council Summary by Kavithan
Previous projects 2024
We are using the money that we raised to add more seating in our outdoor areas.
School council have discussed this and shared different options with their individual classes.
As a school we decided a picnic bench, a wooden bench and some stools that can be moved around as they are needed.
“You are not making a gift of your possessions to the poor person. You are handing over to them what is theirs.”
Saint Ambrose (340-397 AD)
Lenten Fundraising
This year the school council voted that all pupils across the school should participate in the choosing of the Lenten charities that we will raise funds for in 2025.
Pupils presented for different charities.
Malaika Yr5 -CAFOD
Isabel, Sarani and Eva Yr 6 -Missio
Lena Yr5 -Save the children
Adele and Annie Yr 5- War child.
War child received the most votes.
However, as all of the Charities received votes that were more than 10 percent of the school population.
The school decided to fund raise for all charities presented.
Our Lenten Fundraising 2025.
We have managed to raise the following amounts:
Crazy Hair Day (Missio): £147.41
Sponsored walk(CAFOD): £899.45
Dress in Red(Save the Children): £172.95
Year 6 Activity Afternoon(War Child): £116.40
Easter Egg Raffle(War Child): £350.10
Meeting with Chartwells.
On Thursday 6th March the school council met with Louise Esterhuyzen the participation manager from Chartwells the catering company who provide our school meals.
Before the meeting,the school council asked the pupils in their class about school meals -what they liked and what they thought could be better.
They completed a survey and fed back to Louise.
Here is a summary of the meeting and actions.
- Most children have school dinners at either regularly on at least once a week. The children who don’t have school dinners or don’t have it regularly gave their main reasons for not having it more often as follows:
- Children don’t always like hot food especially on a hot day, the cost and they don’t always like the menu choices.
- We aim to, through meetings such as these tailor our future menus to even better reflect the children’s favourites which will hopefully lead to increased uptake.
- Looking at the current menu the children’s favourite meals are: fish fingers and chips, Quorn nuggets, BBQ chicken Pizza, Roast Dinner, Mac n cheese, sausages and mash and chocolate cake.
- Chartwells are pleased the children are enjoying these dishes and will endeavour to continue to feature them on our new spring/summer menu.
- The children’s least favourite dinners are: Veggie Fingers, Food with beans in it (e.g. veggie burrito) and sandwiches.
- Sandwiches are only served when there is an issue in the kitchen preventing them from providing hot food. With regards to foods with beans in them, unfortunately Chartwells cannot remove the beans from these recipes as they are often, especially in the case of vegetarian dishes the only protein source in the dish, However, as there are a number of hot choices available daily they trust the children will be able to select another lunch option that the prefer. Lastly, should the veggie fingers feature on the new menu launching next term, Chartwells can always look at removing this and replacing it with another item from our menu selector.
- When asked for their favourite global cuisines the top answers were American, Chinese and Indian.
- Chartwells will keep this in mind for future theme menus but are also happy to provide bespoke menus for one or all of these cuisines should you be interested.
- When asked for their suggestions on how we can improve school dinners, the children answered as follows:
- Bigger portions requested. Although the portion sizes are currently within government guidelines, Louise will ask the cook to serve the older year groups (Y5&6) slightly bigger portions.
- Both the children and staff are concerned about food waste. Louise is returning at the end of the month to deliver workshops that focus on not wasting food which I trust will have a positive effect on the issue. Also, tailoring the service and menu to better match the children’s preference, will hopefully also lead to reduced food waste.
- Add more flavour to the food. This request will be relayed to the kitchen.
- Pasta and jackets to also be served on special menu days. Louise spoke with the cook sand she is happy to accommodate the request.
- Request for picture cards for the youngers year groups so that they can better understand their menu choices. I have provided Mrs. Ling with a set of picture cards from our current menu.
- I Food can sometimes be cold towards the end of service. Louise will speak to the kitchen to see what we can do to avoid food cooling down too much towards the end of service.
- Request for a bigger variety of fruit and vegetables. Louise will ask the cook to check what other fruits and vegetables she is able to order.
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Current Projects.