St. Vincent’s School Council represent the views and opinions of the pupils of St. Vincent’s Catholic Primary School. Every child from year 1 to year 6 is given the opportunity to put themselves forward to become a School Council representative for their class. Candidates write a manifesto and give election speeches to their class before formal voting takes place, similar to a real election.

We have meetings every week to talk about the suggestions and concerns the children in our classes have raised and we invite various members of staff and external visitors to our meetings to discuss our suggestions. We have termly meetings with our school catering company, Harrison Catering, and share the views of the children across the school so that we can continue to have delicious, healthy food for lunch each day.

Another part of our role is to be the reading ambassadors across the school. We make sure that the school library is well organised so that children can find the books they want to read. We take suggestions of books from children in all the classes so that we can buy more books for each class book corner.

We meet and work with our school governors and work with our Parents’ Association as often as we can. This is a photo of the 2019-20 School Council meeting our local Ward Councillor, Karen Scarborough. Karen spoke to us about her role and we had the opportunity to ask her lots of questions about it.

We also plan ways to raise money to benefit everyone in the school. One example of this is the annual Fruit Festival, which also encourages everyone to be healthy. We use the money raised to contribute toward buying daily fruit for Key Stage 2 children to eat and also towards having napkins at lunchtime.

Every year, School Council has the privilege to visit the Houses of Parliament and attend workshops on different topics. Our main purpose of these visits is to understand how how democracy works in Great Britain and how they make and pass the laws.

We are the voice of the children!