🗣️🌟 Pupil Voice in Action – Our Pupil Council Gets to Work! 🌟🗣️
Our Pupil Council for 2026–2027 has held its first meeting of the new school session, and our representatives are already getting to work on turning pupil ideas into positive action at St Joseph’s! ❤️
At their first meeting, the Council talked about their important role in representing the views and ideas of pupils across the school. They agreed that every child should have opportunities to share their views and help make decisions about school life.
🗣️ What Did Our Pupils Tell Us?
Before the meeting, pupils across the school completed Pupil Consultation Surveys. The Pupil Council looked carefully at the responses, discussed the suggestions and chose the ideas they felt were most important to take forward.
This means our priorities have come from the voices of pupils across the whole school – not just the Pupil Council!
There was certainly plenty to talk about!
🌳 Playground & School Grounds – pupils would like more outdoor toys, more planting and trees, more colour around the school and new or improved football goals. Some of these ideas will need support and funding, so the Council will share their main requests with school staff and our Parent Council to explore what might be possible.
⚽ More Clubs & Activities – children would love more opportunities to take part in activities such as football, music, art, gymnastics and gardening. The Council would also like to explore bringing back our homework club, which pupils felt could be particularly helpful for children who find it more difficult to complete homework at home.
🍓 Healthy Choices – pupils asked for more healthy snacks, including fruit, strawberries and smoothies. Our classroom fruit bowls will continue to be maintained, with our newly appointed Health & Active Champion and Assistant helping to monitor and look after them. The Council would also like to involve our Enterprise Group in exploring ideas such as making smoothies or lemonade.
📚 Reading – pupils asked for more reading and more opportunities to enjoy books in school. Our new Reading Champions and Library Manager will help to promote reading, recommend books and develop activities to encourage a love of reading across the school.
🌍 Learning Languages – pupils would like more opportunities to learn and experience different languages. We will continue looking for ways to develop this, with P5–P7 also having the opportunity to learn some Arabic next term.
💡 More Choice in Our Learning – one of the strongest messages from pupils was that they would like more choice in what and how they learn. The Council discussed ideas for topics that could bring lots of curricular areas together, and representatives will now gather more suggestions from their classmates for future learning.
👕 P7 Leavers’ Hoodies – our P7 representatives were very organised and made sure this was on the agenda nice and early! They would like arrangements for their leavers’ hoodies to begin in plenty of time, so Miss Lisi will look into this and report back.
🌍 Continuing Our Gold Rights Mission
The Council also spent time looking at our Gold Rights Mission and thinking about how we can continue to make sure children’s rights are known, understood and lived out across St Joseph’s.
Rather than trying to tackle everything at once, they chose three priorities to begin with:
📰 A monthly Rights Spotlight for families
🎨 Creating Rights in Action posters around the school
🗣️ Taking part in HGIOURS pupil chats with school leaders
These will give our pupils even more opportunities to share their views, promote children’s rights and help us reflect on what we are doing well and what we could improve.
🚀 Turning Ideas into Action
Most importantly, our representatives understand that being part of the Pupil Council isn’t just about having meetings and sharing ideas – it is about helping to make things happen!
Actions have now been agreed, with different representatives taking responsibility for particular jobs between meetings. They will also continue listening to the pupils they represent so that children across the school always have a way of bringing their ideas and concerns to the Council.
At future meetings, the Council will return to their action plan to see what has been achieved, what is still in progress and what needs to happen next.
📋 Want to find out more? The full minutes and action plan from our Pupil Council meetings can be found on the Pupil Council wall in the school corridor, so pupils and families can keep up to date with what has been discussed and how our plans are progressing.
We are really looking forward to seeing where our pupils’ ideas take us this year. Pupil voice matters at St Joseph’s – and small voices can make big changes! 🗣️🌟❤️
🌍 UNCRC Links
Article 12 – The right to express our views and have them taken seriously.
Article 29 – Education should develop children’s talents and abilities.
Article 31 – The right to play and take part in recreational activities.
🌱 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Goal 3 – Good Health and Wellbeing • Goal 4 – Quality Education • Goal 10 – Reduced Inequalities
💚 SHANARRI Indicators
Respected • Included • Responsible • Achieving • Active • Healthy
💡 Meta-skills
Leading • Communicating • Collaborating • Initiative • Creativity • Critical Thinking
🌟 The Four Capacities
Successful Learners • Confident Individuals • Responsible Citizens • Effective Contributors
✝️ Strands of Faith
In the Image of God • Reign of God
