- Setting weekly agendas for class council meetings
- Undertaking weekly school council meetings
- Defining key projects across the year and set actions to achieve goals
- Undertaking parent tours, visitor tours and host other key events
Orchard School Council Meeting Minutes
Cross-site School Council Meeting Minutes
Meet Our School Councillors
Annual Summaries
A summary of 2023 – 2024
This year, the School Council shone as leaders, championing key school initiatives. From raising the profile of reading with creative competitions like Mini Library, Book Corner, and Story Writing (with winning entries sent to Young Writers), to organising an exciting Easter Bonnet competition and a successful bake sale to fund school enrichment. They promoted a kinder school community with powerful Anti-Bullying campaigns, including Odd Socks Day, raising funds for The Anti-Bullying Alliance. Their efforts have left a lasting impact, making our school a vibrant, inclusive, and inspiring place to learn!
A summary of 2022 – 2023
This year the School Council encouraged the importance of a friendly school community by promoting ‘Anti-Bullying’ initiatives. They defined what bullying means, and identified the differences between an ‘unkind’ action and ‘bullying’ to encourage the correct usage of the word. They concluded that ‘Bullying is when you are continuously unkind but just being mean once is not.’ The School Council also shared ways in which children can be nicer to one another and how to report unkind incidents. For Anti-Bullying Week, the School Council encouraged everyone to wear odd socks in support of the 2022 ‘Odd Socks Day’ theme of ‘Reaching Out’ – which encouraged children to reach out to someone who is subjected to experiencing unkind actions. £122.60 was raised and donated to The Anti-Bullying Alliance.
A summary of 2021 – 2022
This year the School Council focussed on promoting regular attendance, celebrating and appreciating diversity within families and communities, and encouraging a ‘greener’ society, in collaboration with the Eco Team. Action items saw the children holding regular assemblies for KS1 and KS2 to promote eco-friendly initiatives and activities in and around the school, such as using reusable water bottles, and switching off lights and electronic items when not in use. The School Council also held assemblies promoting attendance, by encouraging three slogans within the school; ‘Don’t be late to write the date! Go to school daily, it’s smart.’, ‘Missing school = Missing out!’ and ‘Rise and shine, you’ll get there on time.’
A summary of 2020 – 2021
This year the School Council have continued to represent pupil voice across the school. The School Council had to meet in bubble groups to ensure COVID-19 safe measures. Democracy Day and elections went ahead, £500 was raised for our charity, UNICEF through a community auction, and a meeting was held with the catering team to discuss menu options for enrichment days.
A Summary of 2018 – 2019
This year we have continued to identify and work on projects. We identified a charity which was the NSPCC and we raised £250. We also held a cross site Debate Competition and drew on the school Debate Team to train pupils in Year 5 to compete. This was a great success. We have also built on the success of Matheletics clubs and we ran a Rockstars Club targeting key pupils in Year 3. We also continued our cross site visits and the learning walks have really helped us to identify key things we want to achieve at Orchard. This led to an Inspiration Station and Book Corner competition. Meetings have continued to take place once every two weeks and Year 6 leaders have supported class council meetings in Years 1 and 2.
A Summary of 2017 – 2018
We were keen to build on the success of our predecessors and make this year successful. We thought carefully about how we made some of the 2016 – 2017 successes sustainable and this meant we continued the charity vote (our chosen charity this year was the RSPCA and we raised £360) , mathletics club and our cross site visits which have continued to be useful and successful. The Mayor of Hackney was invited and attended a meeting and we have continued to campaign for the council to review the Well Street box junction to make this safer. In response to our parent community, we have done work in school on the impact of emissions and put up posters to make people aware of the impact of car fumes on primary school children. To support this further, we teamed up with the Junior Road Safety Officers to run a Stay Bright non-uniform day. We also wrote an anti-bullying leaflet to support pupils across the school in their understanding.
A Summary of 2016 – 2017
We had a very busy year working on a number of projects in 2016 – 2017. Our matheletics club ran very successfully following applications and support in startup from Mr Siddique, the school maths leader. We also worked hard to cost out the fruit tuck shop and after a successful trial in Summer 1 we made this a successful feature of Summer 2. We raised over £450 for our chosen charity, Cancer Research UK as well! We undertook cross site visits where we completed learning walks, discussed cross site projects and shared our good practice with our peer school councillors!
