School Council Meeting

School Council Meeting 16.10.17

Minutes- taken by secretary Levi George, typed by Mrs Gallacher

 

Agenda:

• Introduce visitor Cllr. Brian Vincent – 10 minutes Q&A session.
• Feedback ideas about Speaker’s Award – 5 minutes
• Compile ideas into a list of about 6 – 10 minutes

 

Brian Vincent

Brian introduced himself and informed us that in his job as a councillor, he represents the local area including Laira and Efford. Within this role he helps young people and was directly responsible for helping us to get our allotment and the resources there.

 

We asked Brian which subjects he thought were most important in school. He said that of course he thought the big subjects of English and Maths are important but also key life skills like paying bills and going food shopping etc. Lots of the common sense things that will help us throughout life.

 

We also asked why he decided to be a councillor and Brian said that he felt passionate about his community. He said that it had given him so many opportunities when he was younger that he felt he wanted to give something back.

 

Another question we asked Brian was what his role as a councillor entails. He said that it changes on a day to day basis but is mostly helping families in the local community. However, he also makes lots of decisions about changes happening in Plymouth e.g. new buildings, road layouts, parking issues etc.

 

Brian felt that it was important for young people to speak up as we have the potential to make positive change happen.

 

Speaker’s Award

We moved on to discussing ideas that people came forward with regarding the Speaker’s Award. Lots of them were about road safety around the school, particularly the back lane. Brian said that he is currently in talks with the council about changing the parking around the school to make it easier for residents and less dangerous for the children.

 

Another big issue which came up many times is discrimination in sports particularly boys -v – girls in football, rather than us working as a team. We asked Brian how he could help to empower girls with a passion for sports when they may be feeling overshadowed by the boys. He said that his colleague, Councillor Pauline Murphy, is a qualified football referee. Brian said that he will contact her to see if she can come in and speak during an assembly or similar.

We narrowed down our ideas for the Speaker’s Award as the following:

1. Cleaning up the school – better recycling, litter picking
2. Discrimination in sports – tackling issues of: aggression in football, poor sportsmanship, boys not allowing girls to play, cheating
3. Road safety around the school – double yellow lines, speeding, road layouts
4. ‘Team Ant’ across year groups – young and old coming together, ensuring equality across year groups, no unfair advantages for being older/younger.
5. Improving school dinners – children to have a say in which meals are served, reconsider how dinners are served.

 

Points to action:

School council reps will need to get together in groups to campaign for their chosen project before a whole school vote takes place to decide our Speaker’s Award school project.

Mrs Gallacher needs to order more School Council badges.