As the pupil council we have bought the buddy bench and people are using it well.
The pupil council this year helped design a new points system. We have to earn points that count towards a big prize for your House. The pupils really like this because the prizes are good and it is fair. We could make the points system even better next year, by reminding the teachers to give us points for good behaviour and for effort as well as our achievements.

This year we have linked with a girls school in Calcutta. We have just started this link and the Pupil Council are busy making a movie about our school to send to them.

The Pupil Council organised a whole school survey about what makes our school great and how we could make it better.
We decided that what made our school great was that at St Mary’s we feel that it is a safe and happy place to learn. Our teachers are all very kind, helping you to improve, and supporting you when you make mistakes. We know it’s alright to make mistakes. Our teachers care about our rights, thoughts and feelings. Our teachers include us in everything that we do here at St Mary’s. Pupil choice is important and staff are there to listen to you no matter what. There is never a problem too big or too small.

We are like a big family at St Mary’s. You always have fun at playtimes because there is always someone to play with. We all help each other and are very friendly. There is always a lot to do in the school. During our Responsibility Times we all help with committees like our Pupil Council, Peer Supporters, Health committee, House Captains, Acorn Media group, and Global Citizen group, our Master classes are great fun too.

To make our school even better the survey from the classes told us that pupils would like
More whole school trips, so we organised to go to the National Museum of Scotland in Chamber Street, everybody loved this. The Pupil Council will try to help organise another whole school trip next year, I wonder where we will go?
Pupils wanted more of a choice over Master Classes, so the Pupil Council organised a survey to see what classes the teachers could organise for us. This list will be used for next year.

Pupils felt that they wanted more art opportunities throughout the whole school.
Pupils also wanted to provide an area for our younger children to play with the mud as people felt that the school garden was becoming a bit messy.
The survey also showed that we need to try and make activities that are played on the pitch fairer so that it wasn’t always football, but people had the chance to play different sports. The Pupil will discuss this with our Health Committee to try and fix this and make a better charter

At the moment the Pupil Council are busy planning our Community picnic and we have decided that the theme for this is “A day at the beach.” Hopefully it will be sunny.

Another group in the Pupil Council have joined up with the Global Citizens group to help plan and make a mud kitchen in our playground. We hope to have this ready before the end of the summer term.

Changes we have made
This year the pupil council have achieved many of our goals that we set back in June. We have changed the awards and sanctions system, replaced golden time with activity afternoons and we no longer have time off golden time as we have replaced it with warning cards and slips. We have also allocated a new charity to support this year, SCIAF.

Rewards and Sanctions
We have replaced our old points system with Golden Acorns that are awarded to people who follow and respect the Reach Code. Our old way of punishing people would be to give them time off Golden time but as we have made them into Activity Afternoons, we now have a warning card which then leads to a slip of paper that you have to take to Mrs Paterson if the bad behaviour continues.

Activity Afternoons
Another change is that golden time is replaced with activity time. Activity afternoon is every Friday afternoon, when all the pupils get to choose two activities. One of which has to be healthy and the second is a free choice and can be something like art or music or using the computers. Some of the sporty activities we have tried have included cross country running, tennis, dancing, athletics and hockey.
P4-7 share the same activities, unless there is a specialist coming in who will only take one class. The P1-3s have different activities but still follow the same rules, that they must do one healthy activity.

Budget
This year the pupil council was given some money, which they could spend on what ever was needed at the time. The first sum was given to the P4/5s to buy refreshments for their museum project. The rest of the money has not yet been used but is there for emergencies and when it might be needed.

Surveys
Over the past year quite a few surveys have been given out to the pupils to complete and then handed back to the pupil council to analyze the results and then create an action plan reflecting the results. The surveys that were carried out included activity afternoon, to find out if the pupils enjoyed the new layout, one about how he pupils felt they did in school, to see if some improvements could be made to the school, and the last one was to see what improvements could be made to the school lunches.

Next session we will carry on with the work of the pupil council and take on the additional responsibility of co-ordinating the information going onto the website and into The Acorn.

By Rachel, Sophie and Pearl (P7 pupil Council Representatives)

Budgets

The Pupil Council have a very important job, dealing with the school’s funds and we now have a budget for the school, classes, houses and committees. We have already had our first request from Cromlix for money to pay for new litter pickers.

Pupil Surveys/ Action Plan

We have also collated all of the pupil surveys and made an action plan based on the results. Our actions are:

• To make sure that everyone is getting on well with their learning.
• To make sure that staff talk to pupils about their learning.
• To make sure staff are supportive about what pupils are saying.
• Make sure pupils are encouraged to choose healthy food and activity choices.
• To make sure everyone is happy with the way the Activity afternoons are being run.
• So that everyone knows what out of school activities and Youth groups are on in the Area.

Anti Bullying Policy

Some of the older members of the Council met up with Pupil Council members from the Dunblane Cluster and discussed a new anti bullying policy that we will introduce in all the schools.

Our aims are:

• To have an all-round message that includes all the schools and places in the Dunblane area.
• To let everyone know what bullying is about and what it can do.
• To have a no-nonsense approach to bullying - Once is enough.
• To have lessons to learn how to ‘bounce back’.
• To create a fixed way to report bullying all around Dunblane.
• To put a stop to bullying.

Success Criteria for Group work

We have been making sure that each class has their own success criteria fro what makes an excellent Group Discussion. They are now being used in classes whenever they are working in Groups.

By Sophie (Pupil Council Member)

St.Mary’s has had a School Pupil Council for several years now. Councillors are elected from among the pupils, by the pupils, at the beginning of each academic year. The school council aims to give pupils an opportunity to discuss school-related issues which are important to them, and to give pupils some responsibility and involvement in the running of the school. School council meetings are held every 3 weeks, and an open meeting is held at the end of the academic year at which councillors report and take questions on the year’s activities.

The Pupil Council are elected each year to represent pupils views on how we can make St Mary’s a happy school in which to work and learn.
So if you have any ideas or suggestions please contact your Pupil Council representative.

The pupil councillors have been very busy over the last 2 years. They have achieved the following:

• Bought the pencil bin
• Bought the compost bins
• The houses were given responsibilities
• We had a movie afternoon
• We raised money for the riding for the disabled by bouncing back
• We discovered peer mediation
• Made a new reward and sanctions system
• Repainted the pitch and playground
• We bought a bench
• Built a sand pit
• Planted a willow tunnel
• We bought basket ball nets
• We bought new goals

There will be more updates on what we are up to in the recent future.