At Lostwithiel Primary School, we take pride in fostering a culture where all children feel listened to, valued, respected and empowered. Pupils in our school have a strong voice, and we endeavour to give all children lots of opportunities to share their thoughts and opinions and play an active role in the decisions that affect their learning and well-being.

We have lots of ways that children can do this formally through our pupil voice groups (see below). As well as this, we want to create an ethos that allows children to regularly share their opinions in an informal way, in class and through working parties which we organise on an ad hoc basis during the year.

As part of our learning at Lostwithiel Primary School, we support our children in developing as confident, articulate learners, able to make informed choices and express their views. Through collaboration and enquiry in our classrooms, we build thinking skills and help our pupils consider, express and reflect so that they can use their voices effectively.

Currently, there are a range of opportunities for our children to have a voice and feedback from these groups is shared across our whole school:

TEAM 12 – Children from across the school work on issues of school improvement, learning and curriculum.

Eco-Schools Group – Children from across the school work to raise awareness about Eco-issues and ensure our school is doing its bit to help our world.

Student Voice Group – Children of different ages meet to discuss issues that are important to them. They form the body of our ‘Rights Respecting School’ steering group and especially look at how we can implement and teach children about their ‘rights’.

Play leaders – Children from Year 6 have been specially trained to help with the younger children at lunchtimes.

 

Pupil voice

The group is open to anyone who would like to take part, respecting ideas wherever they come from, and working hard to hear quieter, less confident voices. At first the group started small, just four members. Now the group has over 15 children actively engaged.

The children bring their ideas, concerns and areas of interest to the meetings and they are discussed as a group, and actions are then created. Key areas of interest are centred around the environment. The group are currently trying to bring more plants into our classroom spaces. We would like to thank to 'Plant Swap' for supporting us with this. It was a joy to come to Cafe Sam to collect some plants and seeds to help with this initiative. The Plant Swaps donation of £50 will give the 'Student Voice' group the opportunity to plan additional outdoor learning opportunities for all the children at school.

 

TEAM 12

The role of a school council member:

• You will attend regular fortnightly meetings with other TEAM 12 members from each class.
• You will take ideas and suggestions your class have to discuss at TEAM 12 meetings.
• You will bring back ideas, information and suggestions to your class and encourage your class to listen, discuss, share their views and, where necessary, vote on actions that need to be taken.
• You will help to organise charity events throughout the year.
• You will encourage the pupils in your class to be aware of their school environment and to respect and care for it.

As an individual, you may bring lots of additional skills and abilities to this role in particular, however, to be a successful TEAM 12 member you need to: 

• Be reliable.
• Be proud of our school and want our school to be the best it can be.
• Listen carefully to the views of others and take their ideas on board.
• Represent the majority view of your class, even if you don't agree!
• Commit time to this role and accept that you may need to do things during break times and/or lunchtimes.
• Be enthusiastic.
• Be kind and respectful.
• Be patient

 

TEAM 12 - our school council

The team meet each week to discuss issues that may be affecting the school or to plan activities or events to develop certain aspects of school life. 

Each member of Team 12 is elected by their class and they are expected to be role models to other children - exhibiting our five school values of Pride, Passion, Perseverance, Participation and Partnership.

Each team member is a voice for their class. Children can talk to a Team 12 member about anything that concerns them within the school or any ideas they have to improve our school and the Team 12 representative will bring these ideas to the weekly meetings with Mrs. Badger, our headteacher. 

As well as improving our school, the team are also involved in the community as well. Team 12 are the voice of Lostwithiel Primary School pupils in the local area.

 

TEAM 12 Members 2023 - 24

Year 1 - Lerryn and Emily

Year 2 - Leovel, Loic and Harry

Year 3 - Ava and Arlo

Year 4 - Florence and Reuben

Year 5 - Inigo and Amber

Year 6 - Lenny and Ruby

 

TEAM 12  Activity 23-24

Team 12 organised a Healthy Lifestyles Week in the Autumn Term. Here they relaunched the school's focus on Healthy Snacks for breaktime and also helped to arrange lots of activities during the week to help get us all active.

Following on from this, Team 12 then worked with the PTA to order new equipment for playtimes. This is now being used on both playgrounds at lunchtimes.

Team 12 were asked by Lostwithiel Town Council to find out what pupils' thought about the town's play spaces and what could be done to improve them. After consulting with their classes, Team 12 members met with Lostwithiel Mayor, Karin Henderson, to give feedback. Karin was incredibly impressed with the children's ideas. 

One issue that our Team 12 members are concerned about is litter in the town. So, in true Team 12 style, they took matters in their own hands. They ran a competition for pupils to design a poster to encourage everyone in the town to bin their litter. The winning entries will be turned into weather proof signs which will be situated around the town. As well as this, the Team then went into the town and did a litter pick to help tidy up their town. 

Watch this space for more Team 12 news!