Pupil Voice

At St Mary and St Michael, we believe that our children are the most important people and we endeavour to give ALL children lots of opportunities to share their thoughts and opinions and play an active role in the decisions that affect their learning and well-being.

We have lots of ways that the children can do this formally, such as through the School Council, Eco Council, House Captains, Faith Friends, Reading Ambassadors and pupil questionnaires.

School Council

A new school council is elected by their peers at the beginning of each academic year. Our school council is made up of 2 representatives from each year group from Y2 to Y6. This creates a central group that speaks on behalf of the whole school and makes decisions about school life. We value the opinions of our pupils and the School Council gives pupils a forum to share these opinions with the Headteacher and other members of staff.

Here at St Mary and St Michael’s our school council members are elected by their peers to represent the views and opinions of the pupils in our school.

Our School Councillors for 2023/24

Miss Pullen and Miss Akhter – School Council Teacher Representative

We are very proud to lead our School Council. We have amazing children in our school who have lots of great ideas on how we can work together to make a better school. They do all the hard work and like to get involved as much as possible…making my job a bit easier! We have children from Year 6 to Year 3. We want to make sure that all children’s voices are heard in our school. Each class has a school council box which gives all pupils in our school the opportunity to voice their opinions and share their ideas. We meet every other Wednesday to discuss the ideas from our class boxes and events we are running. Then each class representative feeds information back to their classes. We are very fortunate to work with a great group of children this year and we know we are going to achieve a lot for our school.

What do we aim to do this year:

• To give the pupils at St. Mary and Michael’s a ‘voice’ where any suggestions and concerns are listened to.
• To encourage collaboration between pupils of different ages.
• To allow pupils to experience a democracy first hand and learn the importance of being active citizens.

In Action

To kick off PSHE at St. Mary and Michael’s this academic year, the school councillors were elected and met to discuss our aims for this year. 

We collected ideas in preparation for Anti-Bullying Week (Monday 13th November to Friday 17th November), which started with a whole school display. Each class wrote kind words in a speech bubble, which went along with this year’s theme: Make a Noise about Bullying. We hosted a whole school poster competition around the theme of Anti-Bullying, which was judged by the school Councillors.

 

 

On Monday of anti-bullying week, we celebrated Odd Socks day as a means of exploring how each child is unique. The school councillors delivered Acts of Appreciation around the school to children and members of staff, to celebrate how much we appreciate the kind things each other do. 

 

 

On Friday 17th of November, we celebrated Children in Need by having a pyjama day. As a whole school, we learnt about why Children in Need is important and raised money to support this cause.

 

 

 

Eco Council

Welcome to St Mary and St Michael ECO Council.

Our aims are to:

• Raise environmental awareness
• Run projects to ensure and sustain environmental awareness
• Support the school in reducing its environmental impact by encouraging all to turn off lights, recycle waste, use recyclable containers.

We already recycle our lunch rubbish and we are going to continue recycling batteries.

Our ECO Councillors for 2023-2024

Our pupil representatives range from Year 1 all the way to Year 6

 

 

Well done to last years ECO Warriors and to all those who helped us gain the ECO Schools Green Flag with distinction!

We hope to continue this good work through-out the next school year.

 

 

We are continuing to save our batteries to stop them from ending up in land fill sites. Well done to Chloe and Umair who have both brought in a great deal of dead batteries already!

We are collecting bottle lids of all sizes and colours for a project we would like to start in the spring term.

In November, we are doing our bit for climate change by seeing if we can cut our carbon. Please fill in the tick sheet with your children and see how much you can do to help!

 

Top Tips –

More to follow…

House Captains

At St Mary and St Michael’s we recognise the importance and value of House Captains in supporting our school. Each house has two Year 6 House Captains. House Captains are elected in September and students in KS2 have the opportunity to vote for their chosen House Captain through a secret ballot. 

The position of House Captains are highly regarded within the school. They carry out duties on a daily basis to support staff and represent the school on official engagements such as the Sport’s Day, parent consultations, harvest festival and many more. Due to this, we expect the children’s attitude and behaviour to be of the highest standard. Other children in the school should view the House Captains as role models thus their appearance, attitude, hard work and determination should be an inspirational message to all members of the school. 

Some of the key responsibilities of our House Captains include:

• To be a role model in terms of attitude, attendance, behaviour, manners and appearance to all members of the St Mary and St Michael’s family;
• To help organise and support House activities including: Sports’ Day;
• To collect house points each Friday;
• To do lunch duty according to the rota;
• To show visitors around the school;
• To wear the House Captain’s badge with

Our House captains for 2023/24:

 Faith Friends

St. Mary and St. Michael’s Faith Friends are pupils from Year 3 to Year 6. They are here to support our friends in their faith and be positive role models throughout the school. 

Read all about our Faith Friends under Catholic Life.

Reading Ambassadors

Being a Reading Ambassador is all about reading for pleasure and sharing the deep enjoyment of reading a great book with others.

Reading Ambassadors are chosen for their love of reading and their enthusiasm to share this. Part of the job of a Reading Ambassador is to encourage others in class and in the school to read. 

More roles the Reading Ambassador take:

• Making sure others get to know about new books, and all things related to reading.
• Show and tell the rest of the school all about anything new that they have read, that they like, and will be available to the rest of the school. This might include assemblies.
• Reading with younger readers, mainly Reception and Key Stage 1, to help show what great reading role models they can look up to.
• Create displays around the school, encouraging other children to find out about new authors, celebrated authors and different books.
• Read books and help other children through their recommendations.

Our Reading Ambassadors for 2023/2024: