Pupil Voice
Welcome to our pupil voice page. Every year we all get a chance to be elected into one of three different pupil voice teams; School Council, the Green Team and the Rights Respecting Rangers. Before we can be elected, we write our own campaign speeches, deliver them to our classmates, and finally hold our breaths while they go to the ballot box and cast their votes. Our voices are very important to the school and our ideas and initiatives are listened to and acted upon.
To see what each team is focusing on at the moment, keep reading!
School Council
What do we do?
A big hello from the School Council. We would like to welcome you to our wonderful school where we are all different, all equal and all smiling! Our job, as members of the School Council, is to represent the views of all the children in our school. We do this by discussing important issues, feeding back to classes and helping to make Coopers Lane the best place to learn! The School Council have meetings every week so if you have anything you would like to talk to us about please come and find us! The school values are important to us and we will try to promote them in school in all we do. Have a look at our pictures and the information on our display near the office!
We also have a number of deputy representatives who will attend meetings and contribute to the running of the school council at certain times of year.
What have we been up to?
We have been very busy lately; approving anti-bullying leaflets and making the school development plan child friendly, discussing how to promote walking to school to improve health, safety and wellbeing, promoting charitable events, and of course discussing matters brought to us by our classmates.
This term we will continue to provide opportunities for classes to share their ideas and concerns by speaking to their School Council Representatives. It has been difficult to have weekly meetings with the pandemic but we are hoping to have some socially distanced sessions during the Summer Term.
Green Team
What do we do?
A big hello from the Green Team.
We aim to implement energy saving, recycling and environmental projects in school. The Green Team have meetings every week, so if you have any ideas of things we could do to help our local environment then please come along or share your thought with one of us! Our pictures and information are on our display near the office.
What have we been up to?
This term we will be focusing on looking after the green space within Coopers Lane – watering the plants in the Peace Garden, the bamboo in the KS2 playground and the trees that have been planted along Pragnell Road. We also want to reduce the amount of plastic waste that we create at Coopers Lane during lunchtimes and plan on taking part in ‘Plastic Free July’. During July we will encourage all children and adults that bring in a packed lunch from home to ‘refuse to use single use plastics’ – such as clingfilm and sandwich bags and instead use reusable containers.
We are delighted that our hard work campaigning to make Pragnell Road safer and more environmentally friendly has paid off. We now have a School Street meaning that cars aren’t allowed down the road during drop off and collection times and it has made a huge difference.
Rights Respecting Rangers
What do we do?
A big hello from the Rights Respecting Rangers.
Our role is to promote the rights across the school with the help of our trusty mascot Ricky. Each class gets the chance to look at particular rights and then write in Ricky’s journal so that the rest of the school can see what the classes have been up to.
The Rights Respecting Rangers have meetings every week, so if you have any ideas of things we could do to help promote our rights and equality for all, then please come along or share your thought with one of us! Our pictures and information are on our display near the office.
What have we been up to?
Over the last few years we have helped to set up some WE campaigns including WE Read Together, WE Scare Hunger and WE Bake for Change. These have been whole school and community events where we have raised the profile of the rights and also raised money for charity. Recently we have also visited the Mayor of Lewisham to grill him on environmental issues that affect us and our school – we think this might have contributed to Pragnell Road becoming a School Street! We are particularly proud of creating information leaflets for other children and our parents that explain the importance of the rights and how we celebrate them in school. Every year some of us Rangers have the opportunity to attend WE Day at Wembley Stadium, where we’ve listened to inspirational speeches from people such as Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, Idris Elba, Katie Piper and Rita Ora. This is our favourite event of the year!
This term we are looking to invite some visitors into school to help us create street art that represents the rights. As we are part of the British Council’s Connecting Classrooms through Global Learning project, we would like to create more links with a school in South Africa and set up Zoom sessions to find out how they promote some of the Sustainable Development Goals.