Pupil Council Minute

Pupil council minute

17/05/2017

Present: Dr Mustard, Imogen Crozier, Kirsten Ireland, Leah Cameron, Neve Barrett and Rebecca Fraser

1. Imogen went through the pupil speaker award and changes were made if required.

We will continue to work with the speaker award for a while to see if any further changed are required.

Imogen’s progress so far is below.

Promoting achievement in Carnoustie High School

As a council we, the pupils, wanted to develop the skills and talents of our peers and classmates. One way we decided to do this is to; showcase what extra-curricular activities are available for the pupils both, inside and outside the school grounds in our local area. We hope to send out a leaflet showing a wide variety of clubs that pupils can attend. We would also like to hold a S1 event for Primary 7’s who are becoming the new S1 in August; so they too know what opportunities are available. As a council we have previously created a study booklet for the seniors, S4 – 6, showing the times and places for study support around the school. We sent this out to parents, teachers and pupils. This raised awareness of help around the school and promoted achievement throughout these year groups. We hope to promote this further with this new project and that is why we have decided to call it: Promoting Achievement in Carnoustie High School.

One reason why we decided this project is to support the wellbeing of coming S1’s in August. Many members of the pupil council are part of other clubs such as STEM club, Rights Respecting Schools Association, homework club and many more. It has come to our attention that many of these clubs lack in attendance, and as the pupil council we hope to raise this by distributing leaflets and showcasing the clubs on off to new S1. It is also important that the new S1’s are aware of opportunities where they can meet new people and more importantly have fun! Some clubs are specifically for the younger years in school, such as S1 and 2. Examples of some clubs include: mandarin club for S1’s, Mech Drawing club for S1 and 2, Buddy club where important socialising between seniors and S1 – 2 takes place and other clubs are for everyone. Another reason is that your CV become very important during senior years and the more experience you have the better, clubs can show your likes, hobbies and different skills you have gained. This can vary from map reading skills learned from Duke of Edinburgh, team work and leadership from Rock Challenge and even the benefit of another language a such as mandarin. Communication of what clubs are available is quite difficult to get if you don’t know some people who go there. We have started collating information for the whole school leaflet and S1 event as a result of these concerns in school.

As a pupil council we hope this will create a greater awareness of the clubs available. And hopefully promote pupils to socialise with all year groups. It can be quite daunting to socialise with new people however it is an important life skill that is good to have, as it can impact their future life if they find it hard to socialise. These skills acquired from clubs can contribute to a pupils CV and help them later in life. We hope to encourage pupils to develop a wide range of skills such as: Data handling Literacy, Team building , Interpersonal (relate to others, create bonds, positive relationships), navigation, leadership, money handling and business skills, develop new languages and socializing skills. Pupils can also become aware of the jobs that can be associated to their hobbies (engineering in Science).

This project is a work in progress, we have started collating information for the leaflet and the contacts of other clubs outside the school that we can invite to the S1 event. We are going to have a shorter lunch time which creates a limited time for lunch clubs, a half day on Friday which means different clubs could be available such as sport activities. Lastly we are also having split lunches which means younger years will not have lunch at the same time as the seniors meaning that it will be a challenge for groups which relay on all the year groups coming. Our plan for the S1 event is to put up a stall for clubs within and out of the school. The stalls are to be looked after by both members and staff. Meaning the new S1’s can see other pupils that have joined clubs.

1. We have decided that a form time survey needs to be sent out to form classes before the summer holiday.

We have discussed ideas for suitable questions to add into or survey and have come up with:

-On a scale of 1 to 10 please rate our pupil council and explain why you have rated it this mark.

-What improvements do you think could be done in order to improve our school council

-How can we make the system easier in order for more pupils and teachers to suggest improvement to make within the school

-What issues are a problem in the school, please explain

-Please ask the pupils in your class how many of them would like to attend one of our pupil council meetings in order to find out more information about our school council

1. Dr Mustard informed us about her Youth and Philanthropy Initiative (YPI) classes that she is currently running with junior classes for a course of 8 weeks. She has informed us that senior pupils now have the option to do the YPI course but for a whole year, she had suggested that we link in pupil council to the senior YPI class in order to fundraise to help improve/ solve some issues that pupils and teachers think are a problem in our school.
2. Dr Mustard needs to write a summary on the pupil council’s progress from the past year so people are aware of what the school council has done within the school.

Leah Cameron