School Council and eco council
School council and eco council elections are held in both the Primary and Secondary phases at the start of the year. A key part of learning around one of the British values of democracy all schools must promote. Pupils are encouraged to stand as their classes or forms elected representatives. Pupils are given the opportunity in class to explain why they would be good school councillors and encourage others to vote for them in elections. Teachers explain the roles, the links to British democracy and encourage the pupils to vote for those who they think will represent them and their opinions well in regular meetings. Votes are held in private, and the winning pupils are announced in classes or assemblies, where those pupils who are not elected are thanked for standing and supported by familiar adults. The process builds on children’s learning and understanding of our school values: aspiration, cooperation, respect, responsibility, unity, and integrity. School councillors can then affect change in the school on a range of issues and are pivotal in the school gaining pupil opinions on a range of issues. The DfE states that schools should:
- Encourage respect for democracy and support for participation in the democratic processes.
- An understanding of how citizens can influence decision-making through the democratic process.
- Ensure that all pupils within the school have a voice that is listened to, and demonstrate how democracy works by actively promoting democratic processes such as a school council whose members are voted for by the pupils.
- Use opportunities such as general or local elections to hold mock elections to promote fundamental British values.
Primary: Congratulations to all our newly elected school councillors. We will be discussing many issues across the year to help improve the school community and issues children have decided the school needs to act on.
Below you can find minutes from the most recent primary school council meetings:
Minutes 14.10.21
Minutes 21.10.21
Minutes 10.12.21
Minutes 1.11.22
Minutes 6.12.22
Minutes 18.03.22
Minutes 14.03.23
Minutes 4.05.23
Minutes 11.05.23
Minutes 09.11.23
Minutes 22.11.23
Minutes 20.12.23
Minutes 02.02.24
Minutes 06.03.24
Minutes 12.06.24
Secondary:
Congratulations to all our newly elected school councillors.
Year 10 School Council 
Below you can find minutes from the most recent Year 10 council meetings:
Eco Councillors
As always, will have a passionate group of children looking to improve their school environment and the wider world. During the first meeting of the council, we planned an environmental audit of the school looking at the ten Eco-School topics.
- Biodiversity
- Energy
- Global Citizenship
- Healthy Living
- Litter
- Marine
- School Grounds
- Transport
- Waste
- Water
Each eco-councillor then went back to their class and led a discussion about where we thought Woodmansterne had made progress, and where we had areas to develop.
When our councillors returned to feedback, there was a lively and passionately argued discussion. We managed to reach an agreement. The three topics for our Action Plan would be:
One of our Y5 councillors had the great idea that we could incorporate the topic litter under the topic of school grounds. The Y4 and Y5 councillors carried out a litter survey. After feedback from classes, we decided that we should look at reducing the use of plastics in school.
“Switch off Fortnight”
One of the topics our school eco-councillors choose for their action plan, was “energy.” The school eco-council made a presentation, including their own videos, to look at ways we can save energy at school and at home. We took part in a project called, “Switch off Fortnight” to draw attention to the environmental impact of energy produced using fossil fuels.
The big walk and wheel Project