St Michael’s Pupil Parliament

We are proud that, at St Michael’s, we offer our children a variety of opportunities to take on leadership roles within the school; we call this our ‘Pupil Parliament’.

At the start of each academic year, we firstly elect our Year 6 House Captains. We have four houses: St George, St David, St Patrick and St Andrew and we elect two house captains from each house. All children in Year 6 can put themselves forward for one of the roles. We hold whole-school hustings, where the house captain nominees deliver a short speech to the other children in their house (from all year groups) about why they would make an effective house captain. The children are then able to vote for the candidate that they feel would represent their house the best. House Captains have a variety of responsibilities – they are a familiar and caring point of contact for our younger pupils, they are responsible for counting the weekly house points and they write out the house point certificates, amongst other duties.

Our school council consists of two representatives from each class. One of the most important roles the school councillors are responsible for is planning and running fund-raising activities. At the beginning of the year, they meet with Mrs Prigg to decide which charities they would like to support over the coming year and they will put forward ideas for fundraising. Last year, the school council ran several fundraising activities, including an ‘I’m a Celebrity’ challenge afternoon, which was great fun (and it raised lots of money for charity!).

Worship leaders play a very important role in our school. Each class has one elected worship leader who work closely alongside the R.E. subject lead to deliver Christmas, Harvest and Easter services at St Michael’s Church. Worship leaders also take a lead role in our daily collective worships in school.

Each class also has two eco-councillors. The eco-council run projects around the school to make sure we are as environmentally friendly as we can be. Annually, the eco-council carry out an environmental review and, based on their findings, put together an action plan and targets for the year. Last year, the eco-council planted over 100 trees on our field to encourage wildlife and improve air quality.

Currently, they are working on reducing the amount of electricity we use in school, thinking about different ways that we can conserve water and making our outside environments litter-free.

All of the children at St Michael’s are able to put themselves forward for any of the class Pupil Parliament roles. We ask that they prepare a short speech and deliver it to their classmates. Their peers then have the opportunity to vote for the candidate that they feel would best represent them. All of the leadership roles are chosen democratically, and this gives our pupils an excellent understanding of the concept of democracy.