Pupil leadership & pupil voice:
The school works conscientiously to promote a range of leadership opportunities from the traditional roles of prefect and school counselor to more recent opportunities such as maths leaders, digital leaders and sports leaders. Some of these posts promote the notions of democracy and require prospective candidates to appeal to their peers for votes while others follow the principles of recruitment in the workplace. The latter requires pupils to respond to job descriptions, write letters of application and in some cases attend an interview. There are then posts that expect a pupil to meet a specific standard before being awarded the post. The role of maths leader requires you to pass all of our school passports so that our leaders are well qualified to support younger children. Roles such as prefect, school council and digital leader often conduct annual questionnaires to collect children’s views and habits across areas such as personal safety & behaviour, bullying and digital literacy/e-safety. The outcomes of these surveys are uploaded to our school website and presented to pupils, staff & governors through termly assemblies and Headteacher reports.
Pupil Leadership Team - Newsletter
Starting in 2022, each term, the pupil leadership team aims to produce a newsletter for pupils to inform them about aspects of school life important to them. The first newsletter, embedded below, gives an introduction to each of our pupil leaders, their responsibilities and what they hope to achieve over the course of this school year.
Pupil Leadership Roles and Roles of Responsibility:
Pupil Leadership Team (New 2022) – The newly formed PLT is made up of our Head Boy & Girl, Deputy Head Boy/Girl, Head of School Council, Head Digital Leader and Head Sports Leader. This group meet with the school leadership team (SLT) each half term to discuss common themes across each group, the effectiveness of school practice across their different domains within school and to discuss ideas that might impact positively on our pupils.
During the autumn term the PLT is responsible for planning and facilitating our prospective parent open day (for the new Reception intake). They are also currently developing ideas for a pupil newsletter. Watch this space.
.Prefects (inc. Head Boy & Head Girl) – this role requires pupils to respond to a job description and person specification, writing a letter of application to the Headteacher. Letters are then short listed and successful candidates are interviewed by the senior leadership team in a formal setting. Alongside the role of prefect, pupils can also put themselves forward to be considered for the additional higher status role of Head Boy and Head Girl (or Head Pupil). These two roles in particular have a very high status across the school with the Head Prefects supporting the Headteacher each week in the celebration assembly. Prefects help to maintain a high standard of behaviour and conduct throughout the school. At break times they are stationed on the staircases and corridors and report any instances, particularly of exceptional behaviour, directly to the Headteacher.
School Council & Eco Council – School/Eco Councilors are elected by their peers at the start of each academic year. They meet each week to look at aspects of the school including; which charities the school will support each term, developing anti bullying practices, considering our Eco Schools agenda (litter picking, improving the school environment, leaf moving to a compost area, recycling, managing the compost bins in our environmental area and monitoring and encouraging wildlife. They also work alongside other school councils within the Arch Alliance partnership of schools on a shared project i.e. healthy schools, mental health, well-being... Children from Year 1-6 are elected to be on the school council. Awards currently held by our School Council include: School Council (Silver), Eco Schools (Silver) and Healthy Schools (Enhanced).
House Captains – this role complements our pastoral and behaviour systems in school. There are four house captains and four vice captains each leading one of four houses (Supernova, Comet, Meteor & Asteroid). Every child within the school is assigned to one of the four houses and the Class Dojos they are awarded each week are totaled by the house captains to create a weekly score for each house. House captains are responsible for supporting the pupils in their house, motivating improvements in weekly scores and occasionally leading assemblies. Our annual sports day is also organised so that pupils across the school are representing their house alongside their year group and themselves individually.
Digital Leaders – the digital leader programme started in 2014 and, as with the prefect role, requires pupils to formally apply for the role by way of a formal letter of application. The digital leader programme is a collaborative project spanning across the Arch Alliance collaborative group of schools and aims to promote digital literacy, safer internet practice and computing skills across partner schools. We also appoint a ‘lead’ digital leader who is given addition network privileges allowing them to prepare and support teacher and Headteacher led assemblies, contribute to the school newsletters and add blog posts to the school blog site. Digital leaders lead whole school assemblies, organise and promote the annual e-safety week, contribute to guidance and support added to the school website & blog pages and present to and work alongside other digital leaders within the project supporting work within other schools through the collaborative blog pages (designed and run by Heap Bridge). Further details can be found on our www.rochdale.digital-leaders.org website.
Maths Leaders – the maths leader programme started in 2016 as the first of our older pupils began to reach the end of our challenging maths passports (individual mental maths targets). As pupils reach the end of the scheme they are appointed as maths leaders and are trained by the Deputy Headteacher to assess and support younger pupils with their personal passport targets. This role is given a high status across the school as the maths leaders are the only people beyond the Headteacher and Deputy allowed to assess and pass pupils within the passport scheme.
Sports Leaders - the sports leader programme started in 2014 and, as with the prefect role, requires pupils to formally apply for the role by way of a formal letter of application. Sports leaders work in pairs and lead provision at dinner times for KS1 pupils across the week, support at after-school clubs alongside the sports coach as well as competitions within the Heywood P.E. partnership of schools. Each year the sports leaders undertake a formal training day to complete their induction. This training aims to help learners develop leadership skills such as organisation, communication and teamwork, as well as helping to build confidence and self-esteem as they take on the responsibility of assisting in leading their peers and younger children.
Buddy System – phonics buddies are specially selected Year 5 children who take responsibility to help a Year 1 child build up their phonics knowledge. From January onwards, participating children work with their buddy for about fifteen minutes three times a week helping their ‘buddy’ practice reading and writing the phonics sounds to reinforce class work and to help them prepare for the phonics screening check.
Alongside the key roles noted above, each class and year group has its own systems for allocation monitor roles and other areas of responsibility. These include responsibilities such as register monitors, star helpers of the day, cloakroom monitors and book monitors etc.