The Charter School

For our last whole school council meeting we met at period 1 on Friday 20^th March; the aim was to have a school council training day. There was about eleven of us altogether-a mixture of years 7, 8, 9 and 10. We were introduced to Miss Francois Ghaly from an association called ‘Volunteers’to teach us tips and important information on how to minute take, be a better chair and to make school council presentations. We got into groups that had about four people in them and we got asked some questions.

"In the absence of Jubril, our termly Chair, I chaired our first meeting for the year 2009.

To start with, it was pointed out that the absence of all Year 11 Whole School Councillors was due to the fact that, from now on, they will focus on exam preparation/revision. Their contributions to The Charter School Council have been invaluable and will be formally acknowledged in Assembly time before the end of the year.

Following the huge work on the School Council mission statements, we have finally collected the main ones from each Year Council. These were decided during their meetings between November and December 2008. The best one will be selected in our next Whole School Council meeting in February.

The meeting also reflected on some good practice regarding School Council life; for example we watched a clip from Deptford Green school, who are currently redeveloping their School Council structure – theirs has been run for over 7 years and we had a chance to realise how much we have already achieved in less than a couple of years.

We also had the opportunity to reflect on some well-known, controversial issues regarding Student Voice; for example, what its benefits are, the extent to which students should have a say, on what, and how it can be manipulated and wrongly abused, etc.

 

An excellent discussion took place after we watched a short video, from Teacher’s TV, about making School Councils and Student Voice statutory in schools throughout the country. Several educational government agencies are looking into it very closely.
Finally, every member of each subcommittee had a chance to feedback from their ‘work in progress’ committees. The Communication Sub-Com is about to launch a survey on the VLE about the type of Teaching & Learning taking place at TCS; the Grounds Sub-Com are also about to launch a survey (a ‘hands up’ during tutor time) about the choice of canopies and seats for a sheltered open space on the grassed area near the Astroturf (as shown in the photo below).

The Teaching & Learning Sub-Com have just finished the first stage of analysis regarding a new reward policy, starting next September. They identified key areas that the students were unhappy with and presented this along with suggested proposals for the new policy. This term they will be liaising with Mr Reilly to look at alternative models for the reward policy and look at ways that it can be implemented.
The Year 8s are working with Mr C Howard, Reprographics, to design and produce an official School Council letterhead. Mr M Charles had previously informed us that approval had been given for this by Mr Sheppard.

Last, but not the least, the Year 7s. A group of Year 7s are now working on a short documentary about raising awareness about the lunch queues; what works and what doesn’t, with the aim to show it in Assembly by Easter time and consequently make a recommendation to the headship team about possible improvements of the system.
For all forthcoming School Council meetings, please check our schedule for times and places on the website. Just click on the School Council logo on the home page.

Mr Di Emidio, Lead Teacher for School Council"

 

 

 

On the 11^th Whole School Council held their November meeting. This meeting was chaired by Jubril in yr 11. To start the meeting we were introduced to Miss Gowlett who was from Youth TimeBank. Youth TimeBank are an organisation that works with young people. They showed us previous projects they had done such as putting on an event and making films. Youth TimeBank will mainly be working with yr 7 until January and then they may start to work with other year groups.

 

We had reports from the leadership meeting from Mr Charles who had been putting forward specific School Council issues such as blinds and lunch queues. We also had reports from Year Councils with the main problems also being lunch queues and blinds which are being looked at and hopefully being replaced shortly. We also looked at The Charter School Mission statement as we hope to have our own Charter School Council mission statement. Each year councillor has been asked to come up a mission statement.

 

There has also been an interview on Friday 14^th November for new Director of Resources which one member of the school council took part in.

 

Hannah Jeffrey

9A