School council welcome pack – what’s in it?
I’ve been coming up with a new welcome (induction) pack for the governing body I’m a part of and it made me think that school councils could do with something similar. I imagine many of your school councils already have one, so what’s in it? Let us know in the comments below.
This is some of what we’re putting in our pack: would any of this be useful for new school councillors in your school? What would you add?
What we’ll do to support you
- Give you a tour around the school
- Set up a meeting with the headteacher
- Set up a meeting with the chair of the [school council]
- Give you an experienced [school councillor] as a mentor
- Provide you with training
What we need you to do
- Go to the meetings and training
- Fill out a form to tell us what you’re good at and what you like to do (skills audit)
- Write a short piece about yourself and give us a photo for the [school council] website
- Go through the attached useful information information with your mentor
Useful information (attached)
- Your role and responsibilities as a [school councillor]
- Minutes from last year’s meetings
- Dates of all this year’s meetings
- List of all the other [school councillors] and a bit about them (with a photo)
- List of all the staff in the school and their responsibilities and skills
- List of all sub-committees and action teams, with a description of what they do
- Report of what we did well last year, what didn’t work and what we want to do this year
- School Development Plan – sets out the school’s vision and what the school intends to achieve.
Useful websites
- https://www.smartschoolcouncils.org.uk/
- http://involver.org.uk/
- http://studentvoice.co.uk/
- http://speakersschoolcouncil.org/
And another thing …
What about people who are thinking about standing for election to their school council: what information do you give to them?
I’ve written up the process you might go through for coming up with your welcome pack here: http://involver.org.uk/2013/05/school-council-welcome-pack-helping-new-school-councillors/