Please can we introduce you to our School Councillors for 2023-2024.

They are led by our Leadership Team of Azania, Bane and Jaxon. 

Inner West Summit 2023

4 of our children went to the Civic Hall to meet our local Councillors, the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress, and representatives from other local primary and high schools.  They also got to vote on how to spend £50,000 on activities for children and young people in our area!

Our Co-Chair of Governors Julie Falkiner also came with us. We all had a great day.

Please see below some pictures from the day.   

School Council 2023-2024

Our first School Council meeting was held this week and we wrote down why our Council is so important.  We talked about our priorities for this year and decided we will be continuing with our Brightening Bramley campaign, including making birdboxes.  We love to have new children in our school and we would like to design a leaflet to welcome them.

We aim to:

• make Bramley St. Peter's and Bramley a better place to live in and to learn in
• look after each other and new children
• make changes for the better
• make good decisions for school and for the community
• be super role models.

From: Stanley Y2, Archie Y6, Jaxon Y6, Jacob Y4, Murphy Y5, Sebastian Y5, Bane Y6, Luna Y4, Maci Y2, Matthew Y3, Emelia Y3, Ruby Y5, Oliver Y3, Megan Y6, Brooke Y4, Olivia Y3, Azania Y6, Frankie Y4, Jacob Y2, Sam Y6, Harrison Y3.

School Council 2022-2023

Our School Council elections for 2022-2023 were carried out in class. Children voted for two representatives from their class to represent them as school councillors for the year.

At our first School Council meeting of 2022-2023 we decided that we would like to lead a campaign which we propose to disseminate to all schools in Bramley.  We have called our campaign 'Brightening Bramley' so we can share some happiness around our whole community. We decided to create a questionnaire which we could share with our own class to think of some no cost and low cost ideas to 'brighten Bramley'. We could then choose the most popular idea by having a vote. 

At our next meeting we decided to change the name of the leader of the Council to 'Head Councillor' and we asked for nominations for this post.  We had to write down then present our reasons why we should lead the Council and we then had a vote. Sam and Evelyn were then chosen as Head Councillors as they had the most votes. Becky and Mason were made secretaries of the Council and they will take the minutes of the meetings.  They are responsible for uploading our agenda and minutes on to the website. 

Brightening Bramley - our ideas

All of the classes submitted their ideas.  They included:

• painting rainbows all around school
• hiding smiley faces around Bramley for people to find
• litter picking
• toys and book swaps
• planting flowers and trees and taking care of them
• painting rainbows on windows (like we did in lockdown)
• decorating Bramley with ribbons
• more benches
• solar panel lights to put on the fence
• saying hello to everyone
• helping the elderly
• creating a 'character' for Bramley 
• being happy and cheerful
• raising money for charity
• legal graffiti
• repairing damage around Bramley
• giving out home made decorations
• having a half day on a Friday for everyone
• putting out more bins to collect rubbish
• lower food prices to help the homeless
• food and water stations for dogs
• more places being child friendly
• inspirational quotes around the town
• brighten the church buildings 
• ban e-scooters on the park
• ban on smoking in public places
• decorate shops and shutters

Two themes stood out during our discussion and from the questionnaire.  They were - having pictures of rainbows in every house in Bramley where there are children and also planting flowers around Bramley. We decided that we would create a sheet which would go home which would have on one side a message from the Council explaining our campaign, then an outline of a rainbow on the other side to colour in and put in our window. 

We thought we we would like to make pictures of rainbows to put up on the fence outside school.

We gave some suggestions for how we could get the message to other schools and they included putting a message on Twitter and our Facebook page, emailing the schools, writing letters to the schools, and Sam and Evelyn visiting the schools. We will discuss these suggestions with Mrs Esplin and Mrs Finn. 

We decided that we would like to see if our local councillors and MP could help us in our campaign and so we emailed them. Here are their replies:

From Councillor Gruen - 

Dear Sam and Evelyn,

Thank you for your e mail. We always encourage children and young people to get in touch with us and tell us what they are doing in case there is a way we can help. Your idea of Brighter Bramley is really great, especially after all the difficult times of the pandemic.

I like the planting idea too. 

Yes, we have got some money that could be used for the things you need to do the planting, but because schools already have a budget of their own, we are not allowed to give the money to the school. It is usually used to give to charities or volunteers, who don’t have any money.

However, if Mrs Lambert could help you to think of an organisation that is representative of the school, but doesn’t have a budget, such as a Parent Teacher Association for example, or a sports or arts club, we could probably find a way of giving some money to that so you could buy the things you need.

I am sure as head councillors you will be able to work with the school council to solve this problem.

We look forward to hearing back from you, good luck with the campaign, and of course we would love to come and visit you in school to see how it is going.

Very best wishes from all of us,

Caroline (Gruen)

From Councillor Ritchie - 

Dear Sam & Evelyn

This sounds like a wonderful project and would be delighted to support as well.

The School Council at St Peter’s have great track record of succeeding, following your important contribution to the Shopping Centre Seats campaign, which led to their successful return. Thank you for all you did as a school. 😊

I look forward to hearing more about this latest exciting project.

Best wishes

Kevin Ritchie

And finally, from Rachel Reeves:

Dear Sam and Evelyn, 

Thank you for your email, and it is wonderful to hear about your campaign to Brighten Bramley!

I have always been impressed by the commitment of your School Council to try to improve the local area, and to think of ideas that will benefit our community. 

Please do keep me updated on your campaign, and I will support you in any way I can. 

If you would like me to put a post on my Facebook page, Rachel Reeves - MP for Leeds West, to make more people aware of the project, I would be very happy to do so. 

With very best wishes,

Rachel Reeves

Member of Parliament for Leeds West

Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer

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