Falkirk Children and Young People’s Group
All pupils in Falkirk have been hearing about an exciting new project which offers them an opportunity to get involved in a Council wide pupils’ group. This post offers more information if your child has shown an interest in being part of this group. Hopefully the information below will answer any questions you have about what this will involve.
What is the group?
At the moment the group is called ‘Falkirk Children and Young People’s Group but one of the first tasks for the group will be to agree what they want to be called! The group is being formed to make sure that children and young people are fully involved in making decisions about things that matter to, or affect them. Examples of this will include influencing Council policies, taking action on climate change and making progress towards Falkirk Net Zero. It will have a similar role to a school Pupil Council but at a whole Council level, and will help make sure that Children’s rights are built into all Council services.
How will it work?
Using Microsoft Teams within Glow (an on-line meeting platform) pupils and staff volunteers will discuss various projects, agree on actions and work out how to make these happen. Children and young people will be able to choose which projects they want to get involved in. The groups will be facilitated and supported by staff, but it is hoped that the children and young people will gradually take more responsibility for how these meetings are run.
How often will the group meet?
There will be different projects that individuals can get involved in and each group will decide how often they are going to meet on-line. It is likely that initially this will be once or twice each school term.
Will it be a safe environment for my child to meet others on-line?
Glow is a secure on-line environment for pupils and the Microsoft Team will be closely monitored by staff. All group members will have an introductory session, where they will be reminded about on-line etiquette and expectations, and this message will be reinforced regularly by staff.
Will taking part mean my child misses out on other classroom activities?
At the moment we don’t have further details about when the meetings will take place, or how long they will last, as we really want the group members to be making those decisions – it’s their group! However the meetings will initially take place during the school day, and this may mean your child being out of class. This is not unusual in schools as pupils take part in a wide range of opportunities outwith regular classes. Being part of this group will help your child develop skills for life and work as part of the wider curriculum provided by our authority.
Why would this be a good thing for my child to take part in?
Your child will have opportunities to develop leadership and communication skills as they connect with pupils from across Falkirk Council. Being able to influence and take action on things that matter to them will also build confidence and a sense of pride and self-esteem. They will be able to experience first-hand just how much of a difference they can make when working as part of a focussed team.
Hopefully this information has convinced you that the Falkirk Children and Young People’s Group would be a worthwhile project for your child to get involved with but if you have any further questions please get in touch.
Tag: pupil council
Introducing Our Falkirk How good is OUR school Toolkit
Children and young people from Sheildhill, Laurieston and Bantaskin Primary Schools helped create a toolkit to make sure that pupils’ play a real part in the way their schools work. They made sure that the toolkit is easy to use. They spent time thinking about the kind of words to use so that the youngest children in our schools and early learning and childcare centres could understand the questions and give their answers.
The adults in your school or centre can find the toolkit documents here when they are logged in to Glow. They can share a Power Point presentation with you so that you can understand how to use the toolkit. There are 5 different sets of questions and these are arranged under the themes and colours above.
Each theme has questions like the ones below. Groups of children and young people read the questions in the toolkit then share their opinions about how well their school/centre does this.
The children and young people who designed the toolkit decided that traffic lights were the easiest way for them to show how well their school was doing. It their school/centre is doing well with a question they choose green, ok is amber and if lots of improvement is needed then it’s a red light. The children who’ve used the toolkit think it’s really important to write down the reasons for their answers too. Here is one of the tool kit sheets they helped to make.
We hope you get to use the toolkit soon. Some schools used it when it was time to decide how well they were doing and what they want to get better at. Sometimes pupil council or other groups use it to help them decide what they want to get better at too. Using the toolkit can help you make a plan for what you want to do and how you want to do it.
Please use the comments space below to tell us how you use it.
