Our School Council is made up of elected members from Year 1-Year 6. The children need regularly and are supported in their work by Miss Taylor. They talk to their classmates about how we can make the school better and decide on how their work can also make a difference in our local community and in the wider world. One of the ways in which they make a difference is through their sponsoring of a child’s education in a primary school outside Worcester, South Africa. They are also raising money to buy books for Gericke School’s library.
They previously sponsored the upkeep of an orphaned baby elephant, Mee Chok, who lived at the Blessings Elephant Rescue Retreat, in Thailand.
Their main source of income generation is selling toast to the rest of the school on Tuesday at break time. They also organise non school uniform days, for other chosen charities and have their own stalls at the Christmas and Summer Fayres, organise cake sales and sell pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. Their most recent non school uniform day was for ‘Hello Yellow’, Young Minds’ mental health day. Everyone came to school dressed in yellow and we spent the day thinking about how we can help ourselves and each other, when we are finding life hard. The children wrote their ideas down on yellow post-it notes and the School Council have made a Hello Yellow tree and hung all our ideas on it.
If the School Council see an issue that they feel needs to be addressed, they work with pupils, staff, governors and the wider community to see if they can help. One of the most recent things the School Council were worried about was the speed of traffic outside the school and the way cars were being parked. Previous School Councils worked with our local councillor, Liz Tucker, and our community Police, to organise several ‘walk to school’ days, did surveys of vehicle usage on Priest Lane and managed to get the Council to assess the level of traffic and it’s speed. They also worked with road safety charity, Brake, to help teach the children how to cross the road safely.
The Values Council is again made up of elected members from across the school (Yrs1-6). They work closely with Mrs Williams to spread the Jesuit School Values across the school. They set an example to others, teach about the values by planning and leading whole school assemblies and retreat days, and support the school community in living out these values in our everyday lives, through prayer, giving to charity and having care for all God’s creation. One of their key roles in school is our Harvest, Advent and Lenten fundraising, where they typically collect food for Pershore Food Bank, and organise fundraising activities for Cafod, Father Hudson’s Homes, Maggs Day Centre, and the Kenelm Youth Trust.
