The school has its own school council where members are elected from each class in each year group. A chairperson, secretary and treasurer are chosen through the usual electoral procedure to head the group. Each member of the council proudly wears their own badge so that other children know who to approach with any issues that they might wish to raise.

The council meets regularly and members discuss any issues that have arisen. Class representatives then feed information back to their respective classes. In this way everyone is afforded representation and the views of everyone are valued and can be heard.

If you are a pupil at the school then you can visit the bulletin board. If you want to raise an issue approach your class representative or a council member. They'll be happy to talk to you and will do their best to answer any questions that you might have. If they can't help they'll know someone who can!

At Southwater Junior School we believe that Pupil Voice is about giving our pupils the opportunity to positively influence their learning and the environment around them.

We view our pupils as competent, active contributors with a right to a say in those matters that affect them. Increased pupil involvement allows us as a school to be more responsive to the needs of our pupils and creates a stimulating and engaging environment for learning.

In order to ensure all voices within our school community are heard we constantly strive to find new ways to enable pupils to identify issues and express their thoughts and feelings.

Our biggest achievement has been the production of a Pupil SEF, an official document detailing the views of our pupils, which was used both in a recent Ofsted inspection and as part of an application pack for appointing our new Head Teacher.

Pupil Voice projects at Southwater Junior School include;
School Council
Eco Committee
Charity Committee
Playground Buddies
Pupil SEF
Planning and evaluating the creative curriculum
Interview Panel
Grounds Committee
Charity stalls
Reading Buddies
Moodle forums

The school council are leading this exciting project and have successfully been reawarded the prestigeous 'GREEN FLAG'. They are organising facilities for the recycling of fruit and vegetable waste, t-bags, plastic bottles and paper, as well as encouraging the conserving of energy by asking children and staff to turn off electrical lights and appliances when not in use as well as running an ECO vegetable garden. The next project is to build a greenhouse from recycled plastic bottles.

How can we be more environmentally friendly?
What could we recycle?
What do you think?
Can we save electricity?
Can we save water?
Can we recycle paper?