Meet the School Council for 23/24

The School Council at St Monica's serves as a valuable platform within a school community for several reasons:

1. Student Involvement: Our School Council allows students to become more involved in the decision-making processes of the school. This empowers them to have a say in how their school is run and fosters a sense of ownership and responsibility.

2. We Respect Pupil Voice: Our School Council school respects and values the thoughts and opinions of the wider pupil base: the council ensures that children's voices are heard and considered.

3. Enhancing Communication: Our School Council provides a structured channel for students to communicate their feelings, concerns, and ideas to teachers in St Monica's.

4. Skill Development: Being part of the School Council allows students to develop essential skills such as confidence, communication, negotiation, and teamwork. Our pupils learn how to express their views effectively and represent the views of their peers.

5. Promoting British Values: Our School Council encourages students to understand and respect fundamental British values: democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance. Through the council, students experience democracy in action as they elect their representatives.

6. Contribution to School Improvement: Our School Council actively contributes to improving the school environment and experience for both students and teachers. Our school council propose ideas for positive changes and work towards implementing them as an effective team. 

7. Events and Initiatives: Our council organises and participate in events and initiatives that benefit the school community, such as fundraising for causes like Remembrance Day or promoting awareness and learning about important topics like Black History Month.

As for who would make a good school councillor, qualities like being a good listener, friendly, a team player, having a willingness to contribute, representing the views of others and being a good communicator are key. These qualities are important because school councillors at St Monica's need to effectively convey the concerns and ideas of their peers and collaborate with others to achieve common goals.

The School Council plays a significant role in fostering student engagement, enhancing the school environment, and teaching students important life skills such as leadership, communication, and civic responsibility.

Meet the new School Council, 2021-2022.

The first School Council meeting was held on the 14th October 2021.

The children introduced themselvesto the group. School Council badges were given to the children at the following Key Stage 2 assembly. They all felt very proud!

The School Council at St Monica's; as part of the Strand Partnership Initiative is continuing to focus on the subject; "How can we help to keep our communities safe?"

To that end we invited Mr John Toker, Travel awareness and safety officer for Sefton, to speak to our Year One and Two children in the Mini Hall about Road Safety.

He told the children about the Green Cross Code and how they should follow the code to help them cross the road safely. The Year One children, with the supervision of their teachers, will then practise crossing the road safely on the road outside school.

In addition, The Crossing Patrol lady, Jan Tayler, was also invited to speak to the children. She was delighted to have the opportunity to meet the children and she told us how much she enjoyed her job as everyone was so friendly.

As a follow up to the meeting, Year One have been given the opportunity to enter a competition to design the best road safety banner for our school.

The School Council will then carefully choose the best design to be sent to a graphic design company, who will produce a P.V.C banner to be displayed at the school entrance gate.

On Thursday 27th January 2022, two representatives from the School Council attended the first Strand Partnership meeting of the academic year. The meeting was held at English Martyrs Primary School.

The Strand Partnership is a group of schools who meet to discuss a variety of initiatives which affect the local area. The group haven't met for the last few years due to the global pandemic. However it's now been able to recommence with some safe guarding proceedures put in place.

The project for discussion this year is: "How can our communities keep us safe?"

The meeting was attended by Ward Coucillors, who provided answers and gave us some suggestions on how we can implement this initiative.

A further meeting has been arranged for later on in the Spring Term to present ideas, we have implemented.

We're working hard as School Councillors to present suggestions to the school to help us answer the project's question.

On Monday 20th January, the School Council lead their first whole assembly on British values. The first topic covered was ‘Democracy’. The assembly described what democracy was and how we elect our representatives to lead us in our country. The assembly included ideas on how we can participate in democracy and how we elect school councillors using a voting system.

The School Council have worked on the Strand Partnership project entitled ‘Employability’. They have attended numerous events at Crosby Lakeside which culminated in a celebration event on 20th June 2019. The School Council presented a Powerpoint presentation on the work they have done this year. They presented an assembly in front of the whole school to introduce the topic. Several companies were then invited into school to help the children. The event was organised by Mrs Gibney a parent of St Monica's. we wish to thank her and ‘Arriva Buses’, QVC jewellery, Morgan Sindall a construction company and Agent Marketing a web design company. Year 5 enjoyed learning about how the different companies operate. We were also joined by St Robert Bellamine School. The children had employability passports which the companies kindly contributed. The passports also included leaflets and gifts.