School Council, Eco Council & Junior Travel Ambassadors

The School Council

The School Council is made up of class representatives from each class from Year 1 to Year 6. The children in each class vote for the pupil they would like to represent them at the School Council meetings.

The Council, with Mrs J. Whittemore and Mrs A Cowie meet every 3 weeks. At each meeting the councilors from Year 5 and 6 will take the minutes, but each councilor will have an opportunity to chair a meeting. At School council meetings issues are discussed that have been raised by each class. There is a gold comments/suggestions box in the Rainbow Room where anyone can post additional comments. These comments will be collected and read at the next meeting. After each council meeting the year group who have minuted the meeting will meet with Mrs Close to share what has been discussed and decided.

The council looks for ways to improve the school as well as organising activities including fund raising events. Previously the School Council set up a healthy snack tuck shop, held community and McMillian coffee mornings, held a Special Person Sale for Mums and Dad and invited the residents of Sax House to the Christmas celebrations. This

This autumn term the council will hold another McMillian coffee morning and are planning to hold a bring and buy sale in October. Looking forward to Christmas and the spring the council will hold a Christmas present sale and their Special person gift sale again to mark Mother's and Father's day in March and June.

Our Purpose

We are the voice of the students

We aim to get things done to make our school better.
To find ways to improve our school.
To give every pupil a voice and to make all decision making fair.

Membership and Elections

Any pupil of Stonehill Primary School can put themselves forward to be elected democratically. Each candidate will be given time to think of a speech to present their class which will explain why they think they would be the best person to represent the views of their class. Then the classes vote for the pupil whom they feel would get the job done the best by writing down their name on the voting slip.
School council meetings are held every third week of the half term at different times to ensure members do not always miss the same lessons. For the meeting to go ahead there must be at least 4 council members present. Decisions will be made using a hands up or blind voting system. If a decision can’t be reached, it will be put to the whole school. Ideas and questions are put to classes/the whole school before they are voted on in school council.

School Council Code of Conduct

As agreed by the School Council
to be on time to every school council meeting
to let the Chair know if I am unable to make a meeting
respect and listen to each other
Put your hand up if you want to speak
make decisions after we have listened to each other
always have the interest of the whole school at heart when making decisions
give all children a voice
have a positive 'can do' attitude

How all pupils can communicate with the School Council;

Everybody's views, ideas and opinions matter. All children and staff can contact a School Council representative in the following ways;

speak to a school council class representative when they are free or during their class assembly sessions
write down your suggestions and post them in the school council suggestion box; located in the Rainbow Room.

The Eco Council

The Eco Council currently hold The SILVER AWARD so from everyone in school CONGRATULATIONS

At Stonehill School, we have an Eco Council. The Eco Council is a group of children who plan and undertake activities to improve the environmental performance of the school.

This year there are seven Eco Council members altogether. Each member was elected by other children in their classes. The Eco Council has elected a Chairperson and Vice Chairperson

The Eco Council meet every 3 weeks to plan activities, write letters, make posters and discuss new ideas to improve the whole school’s care of the environment. Details of the meetings are displayed on ‘Our Eco Council’ notice board, in the main school hall. Currently the council are working hard to gain the GREEN FLAG award in the coming 12 months. The Eco council have been selling a variety of items including bird seed feeders to raise funds for the Eco Garden. This term we hope to begin raining funds for a wind chime and colourfull flags to add to the Eco Garden.

Stonehill waste aware plan

Aim: To reduce, reuse and recycle more items at Stonehill School

Food waste

Reward system for individuals or whole classes that eat all their dinners.
Review of school dinner menu to find out which foods are being wasted.
Promotion via posters.
Use a compost bin for cooked food.
Label the staffroom teabag bin, so visitors know where to put them.
Make sure that people use a compost bin in the staff room.

Paper Waste

Promote using both sides of the paper, and remind people to use used paper for scrap/rough.
Use some shredded paper for the compost bin, from each class.
All school printers should have a recycling box.

Use scrap paper in Art, as well as newspaper.
Encourage children and staff to use only one paper towel in classrooms.

Plastic cups and containers

Any containers/materials should be collected, washed and stored. This equipment could be stored in a box in the Art Cupboard. This can be a resource box to be used in Art, Design Technology or in the Early Years for 3D model making.
Encourage children to bring in their own plastic reusable cup or water bottle.

Composting

At Stonehill School we collect our fruit waste as well as the used tea bags from the staff room for composting. We put shredded paper from the office in there to help to create a good balanced compost heap. We have also put tubs in every classroom to collect wooden pencil sharpenings to put in the school compost bins.

Junior Travel Ambassadors

Our Junior Travel Ambassadors have hosted the Modeshift Star Awards for North Hartfordshire and are awaiting conformation that they have achieved their Gold Modeshift Star. Stonehill will be the only school in North Herts to be awarded the Gold level, so keep a watchful eye on the local newspapers for this important news.

The 4 newly appointed Junior Travel Ambassadors (JTA) from Year 5 have been equipped with shiny JTA badges, and they have bundles of enthusiasm, to inspire everyone to think about road safety and transport!

Mrs Whittemore met with the class in a PSHCE lesson in September to explain what the role involves and to share the job description outlining what is expected from all of our JTA's. Everyone completed application forms for the role noting their interests, strengths and why they feel that they would be a suitable candidate.

Mrs Cowie then met with Mrs Whittemore and the retiring JTA's in Year 6 to make their selection. Four new JTA’s from Year 5 were selected who will represent the whole school.

The JTA’s job can entail carrying out assemblies, conducting surveys, classroom talks, helping with completing the school travel plan, uploading evidence to our Modeshift Stars portal, learning how to use a Journey Planner and running competitions on a regular basis throughout our term in office. The term in office is from September to July, following an academic year.

The Junior Travel Ambassador scheme is run by Hertfordshire County Council. We work in partnership with Hertfordshire’s Road Safety Officer, Chi Ming Lai. Mr Lai met with the newly appointed team to discuss projects that they could begin working on. For the last 2 years the JTA’s at Stonehill have been invited to the JTA’s celebration meeting at County Hall in Hertford.

The JTA’s meet every 3 weeks with Mrs Whittemore to share ideas and opinions. During each meeting we discuss our progress with current projects. We also plan future projects, organise prizes for competitions, and select the winners of existing competitions!

The role of a JTA is to encourage a greener approach to transport. We like to see our friends and fellow pupils walking to school wherever possible. We check the Living Streets travel to school data, a hand out badges every month to those pupils who have walked at least twice a week for that month. Walking to and from school is important, but we also want pupils of Stonehill School to be safe on the roads of Letchworth. We work with our school to create a safer environment. We also have a lot of fun running competitions to encourage a safe and sensible attitude to the roads of Letchworth.

Our Successes

Since the Junior Travel Ambassador Scheme started in November 2016, we have:

Launched a Walk to School competition
Raised awareness of road safety at our school
Worked with Living Streets and Letchworth Council to improve safety on the roads outside our school
Introduced our parking pledge “Don’t be road monster” to encourage safe parking in and around the school
Informed everyone about our plans in whole school assemblies
Arranged several Clean Air day by dressing in green to raise awareness
Run a “Bling your bike /scooter” competition to launch the unveiling of our new scooter pods in the main school and the Early Years Unit

We held a competition after our Day-Glo day in school with some super prizes for raising awareness of safety during dark mornings which we hoped helped us achieve the Silver Modeshift Stars.

Future Projects

We have lots of projects happening at the moment, and planned for the future. These include:

Organising Scooter Safety workshops for Year 2 in the summer of 2019
Organising Pedestrian Skills understanding for Year 4 in June 2019
Organising a road safety workshop for the Early Years children in October 2018
Unveiling the new cycle storage units by the bike shed in September 2018

stonehill-school-travel-policy-jan-19.doc