What Is A School Council ?

What is a School Council?

  • A School Council is a group of students who are elected to represent the views of all the pupils and to improve their school.
  • "School council" means all kinds of school-based groups run by students, including student forums and youth parliaments.

What does it do?

A school council does a number of things:

  • The school council meets with Miss Bhopal to discuss and sort out problems.  These may include school lunches, behaviour or ideas for fundraising events.
  • Members of the school council will be responsible for carrying out the ideas that have been agreed, such as planning discos, writing newspaper articles, or meeting with catering staff.

What makes a good one?

A good school council is one that represents the views of all students and gets things done.  Many schools have councils, but they are not all successful.  These are some things that make a council effective:

  • Regular meetings.
  • Class form councils that meet regularly.
  • Good communication between representatives and their class.
  • Smaller groups (sub-committees) working on specific events or issues.

Do they get anything done ?

Lots of school councils just talk, but others do get things done.  Examples of Meadow's School Council successes include those who:

  • Organising Whole School Charity Events
  • Inviting the VIPs to Meadow's 50th Birthday - Boris Johnson MP actually came !
  • Talking to the Governors of the school and telling them your concerns.
  • School lunches feedback.
  • Those who get a packed lunch for trips can now have an option of ham, cheese and tuna.
  • More playground equipment.
  • Ideas for themed weeks, ie Humanities Week, Maths Week
  • Voting for the Jack Petchey winner

School Council's History

School Councils have been around for years, but the introduction of citizenship lessons has led to to lots more being formed.   There are more than 2.500 school councils in the UK.

In some countries there are laws which say all secondary schools must have councils.  They include Ireland, Germany, Spain and Sweden