Our School Council allows the voice of students throughout the school to be heard.

Our Current School Councillors are serving for two terms. All councillors are elected by pupils from their respective classes in an election that takes place every two years for Key Stage 2 and every year for Key Stage 1.

As a School Council, we meet up every term to discuss various ideas and suggestions that can improve our school. At these meeting we usually have an agenda unless it’s an emergency meeting.

In addition to the agenda we also discuss any concerns, suggestions or any other business from our pupil voice boxes that are situated in every class.

Our mission team strive to bring our school and community closer to God through prayer and collective worship.

Here are some of the great things we prepare and do at our school on a daily basis:

The members of the Eco Team have been elected by our classes to help improve the environment in school and to help with issues in the wider world.

We will also be running campaigns each term to raise awareness of issues affecting our world and what we can do to make a difference. We each need to take action to help protect the wonderful world we live in.

We will keep you updated about our campaigns and hope that you will all join us in our mission.

Children at our school were unable to contain their excitement when they were given permission to start the Junior PCSO training at St Philip’s.

Although many of the pupils were shy, lacking confidence and were apprehensive - we could see the eagerness and hunger in getting to work with West Midlands Police and this new scheme. The programme has been overseen by PC Jo Dakin and PCSO Jayne Evans.

With consent from their parents, children and two staff members have had hands on training about addressing issues that affect St Philip’s school ranging from Parking, littering in and around the school, anti-social behaviour in the surrounding community, fly tipping etc.

During the five weeks we’ve seen our children growing with confidence, sharing experiences both positive and negative, and confiding in their Jnr PCSO team. Parent’s shared in their support towards the programme by attending the special awards assembly.

It is no wonder that we can’t wait to start going on duty to committing to making our school and community safe. By being involved in the project it reminds us of our school mission statement: of ‘Learning and working together thorough Christ’.

by Mr L Padotan, Community Cohesion Officer

These are some of our responsibilities as SSC’s:

• Be kind to everyone and help others.
• If a child is in need, talk to them about it and ask if they are okay.
• Report the concerns to the Safeguarding team.
• Treat everyone fairly.
• If you are unsure about a concern, speak to the Safeguarding/Wellbeing team about it. Do not just leave it.
• Be caring and trustworthy.
• Keep information confidential. Only share concerns with the Safeguarding team.

In November 2014 our school started the journey to achieving the Rights Respecting School Award Level 1.

Rights Respecting Representatives were chosen by their peers and form the newly established Rights Respecting Group.

As a Catholic school we model and share with the children the teachings of Jesus (which is reflected in our mission statement) and therefore this underpins the foundations of the Rights Respecting Schools Award.

As a school we have listened to our parents and pupils concerns, and we know that bullying is a serious concern to all. We have asked our pupils and parents for their ideas to tackle some of these issues. One of the suggestions was to have a Playground Buddy System.

Children applied for Buddy jobs and had to get parent and teacher support in their applications. We have trained our Buddies to deal with various issues that were highlighted in our suggestion boxes and questionnaire to parent - Playground Buddies assist newly arrived children, identify and stop bullying in school and are there as friends for all children. They have duty timetables and take their jobs very serious.

We have termly meetings to discuss any concerns when they are on duty and also talk about what is working well and what needs to be improved.