Queen's Park CE/URC Pupil Leadership
The term pupil leadership refers to education principles and practices that reflect the importance of providing children with the opportunities and support to play a role in making the decisions that affect them. The principles of effective pupil leadership include:
Recognising that pupils have logical perspectives and opinions on issues that matter in the classroom, in the school, and in the community.
Giving pupils an active role in influencing decisions about these issues as well as in the implementation of these decisions.
Enabling pupils to participate as active young citizens.
There is much evidence to suggest that when pupils engage with pupil leadership programmes that have a positive impact their capacity for learning increases. With this in mind, we provide opportunities for children from Year 1 to play an active role in the life of the school and contribute to many areas of our effective school community.
We encourage all of our children to be involved, in some way with pupil leadership. There are lots of opportunities for pupil leadership at Queen's Park:
School Council
Junior Leadership Team (JLT)
Worship Monitors
Maths Ambassadors
Junior Librarians
Play Leaders
Wellbeing Ambassadors
Reading Buddies
School Council
We are a group of children who have been specially elected to represent our peers and their views within the school. Our primary purpose as a school council is to give our students a platform to express ideas and handle very important jobs and decision making around the school. They deliver important assemblies, such as Anti-Bullying Week, and lead our Christmas Carol Service.
Junior Leadership Team
We are a group of very important children. The Junior Leadership Team are made up of the Head boy, Head Girl, Deputy-head boy, and Deputy-head girl and two pupil Governors. We help Mrs Kellett to make important decisions about the school. We also represent the school at different events, such as visits to local high schools and churches.
Worship Monitors
Every class has their own pair of Worship monitors. The children are responsible for ensuring that each class has an inviting worship area and where possible, lead collective worship in their classrooms. Some of our worship monitors even create pages in our worship books, which are a lovely celebration of collective worship at Queen's Park.
Maths Ambassadors
Lead by Miss Bailey, our maths leader, the Maths Ambassadors promote all things maths at Queen's Park. It is their job to create an excitement and 'buzz' for maths at school. Previously, they have lead special assemblies and organised special days such as TT Rockstars and Robots day! They also create an annual maths advent calendar to challenge the children at school during December.
Junior Librarians
Lead by Mrs Cook, the Junior Librarians support with the running and organisation of our school library. They love to offer book recommendations and ensure that our library books are well taken care of and that the school library is a welcoming place for everyone, to help promote a love of reading! They also help to design lovely displays in our library.
Wellbeing Ambassadors
Every week the well-being ambassadors plan and deliver well-being Wednesday sessions to each class to promote mindfulness, self-care and relaxation. This includes: peer massage, mindfulness colouring, yoga and they also provide opportunities for the children to participate in other activities to help their own mental health.
Play Leaders
To help and support our OPAL programme, we have a group of Play Leaders. Our Play Leaders are the eyes and ears on the ground during lunch time. It is their responsibility to model fantastic play to the rest of the children in school, and feedback to Mr Weatherby and Mrs Thelwell about play at lunch times, suggesting improvements they would like to see. They also support with the delivery of assemblies.
Reading Buddies
We have a ‘reading buddy’ scheme in school where our Upper Key stage 2 children read with our younger children. Our reading buddies are trained by Miss Monsvoll, our KS2 reading champion. The reading buddies are there to support our younger readers to build their confidence, promote and love of reading and give praise when they smash a reading goal!
The Impact of Our School Leaders...
Our school leaders help lead and manage on 3 key areas in different ways:
1. School projects – All of our pupil leaders support with the delivery of in-school projects, based on an agenda of school improvement projects, usually decided upon early on in the year. These projects all positively impact the rest of the children in our school. Children meet together to discuss issues such as curriculum ideas, school reading projects and much more.
2. Community projects – Some of our pupil leadership teams (JLT, School Council, Wellbeing Ambassadors) meet together to decide on projects that can have an impact on both our wider school community and local community. Some teams may also do fundraising and volunteering projects that involve families from the community. These projects enable our children to know of the positive impact they can have on others around them.
3. World projects – Our JLT and School Council also meet together to think about how we can have an impact on the wider world. Projects involving environmental action, charity fundraising and linking up with other schools across the world enable our children to know that they can have a positive impact on the wider world.
Our Leaders in action...
What do our pupils say about Pupil Leadership in our school?
