Students’ Council
A Student Council is a representative structure for all the students in the school. It provides students with the opportunity to become involved in the affairs of the school, working in partnership with school management, staff and parents. It should always work for the benefit of the school and its pupils.
At the Boys’ School, we feel it is very important for children to share their opinions, ideas and suggestions. To assist pupils in this practice, we are currently in the process of setting up a Students’ Council.
The Students’ Council will give pupils a voice. We want our Council to play a central role within the school; with its status elevated to ensure that the voice of the pupil is heard at many levels of decision making.
- As class representatives, the elected School Councillors will take class suggestions (one per meeting) to full Council meetings on a fortnightly basis (class councillors and school Principal). These Council Meetings will ensure that the views of the pupils will be taken into consideration on suggestions for school development. They can also bring suggestions for class development to the attention of the class teacher to be discussed and developed within their own particular classroom. We want all our children to feel listened to and empowered.
- The personal impact on pupils is significant – pupils will develop confidence in bringing appropriate issues to the school leadership and they will feel that they are active members of the school community. Active participation will allow them to develop as speakers, listeners, negotiators and decision makers. All of this will have a positive impact on their self-esteem and self-confidence, which in turn will mould them to become active members of society and confident of their ability to create change.
Process
Nomination of candidates followed formal procedures early in May (similar to those nationally), and over the past few days, time was allotted to nominated candidates to present prepared speeches to their peers in class. Today, we had our formal voting session, with ‘postal’ votes accepted on behalf of students who had prior engagements. Electoral officers, polling clerks and tally men were all gainfully employed. Spoiled votes were discarded, valid votes counted and a ‘quota’ determined. All hard work and mammoth learning.
What a day! What a month!!
We had great sport and many a laugh at some of the initiatives and persuasion-tactics applied….. All legal of course!
Children will be elected every September by their peers to serve for one year on the Council. The children will meet regularly to share ideas, comments, discussions or raise concerns that have been put to them by other pupils in the school. From these, they put forward ideas for action. Councillors will feed back the minutes from these meetings to their peers.
Current Membership:
Today, the following pupils were elected to the School Council by their class peers (school year ’14-15):
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Chairperson: to be announced after their first meeting.
- Deputy Chairperson: to be announced.
- Secretary: to be announced.
- Members:
° Junior Infants: Aidan Fitzgerald
° Senior Infants: Alan McCarthy
° Rang 1: Colin O’Leary
° Rang 2: Joe McAuliffe
° Rang 3: Ethan Hourigan
° Rang 4: Ronan O’Driscoll
° Rang 5: Seán Murphy
° Rang 6: Ben Newman
