We encourage all of our children to develop leadership skills in school. Our Year 6s in particular take on a variety of leadership roles in school.
House Captains and Junior Leadership Team
Our Junior Leadership Team (JLT) is a group of students from year 6 who are elected to represent the views of all pupils, be excellent role models and work together to improve our school. We follow a democratic process to elect the Leaders. If pupils wish to become a Junior Leader, they must take part in an election process, which includes making speeches and supporting in classrooms. Out of the leadership team, a captain and vice captain for each house is chosen by members of that house. The Junior Leadership team meet with senior members of staff and discuss issues that are important to the children. They are also involved in gaining pupil voice, completing learning walks and looking through books.
The pupils talk confidently about the role in setting the class behaviour expectations and are clear about being excellent role models for their Houses.
Junior Safety Officers
Road safety officers are officially known as JSOs (Junior Safety Officers) and work with CWAC to promote road, community and personal safety messages to their fellow pupils and the wider community. Teachers appoint two Year 6 children to fulfil this role. As part of the scheme, the officers are tasked with promoting positive messages about personal safety, road safety, fire safety and community safety, as well as organising competitions and setting up notice boards.
Vision Group
Our Vision and Ethos Group is usually made up of representatives from each class from Year 3 to Year 6, with additional Year 6 members representing the younger children. The Vision Group meet with Mrs Speed to think about our school’s Christian distinctiveness, vision and values, share and discuss ways to improve our school, plan and lead collective worship and special days/events.
Buddies
At St Chad’s our Year 6 pupils have been paired with a Reception pupil to share various experiences and support our younger pupils. They help the children to settle in at lunchtimes, support them walking to church and share special events with them.
We also run a “Lunchtime Buddy Scheme” where children from Year 6 support children in Reception and KS1 during lunchtimes. The aim of the scheme is to encourage children to be good role models and it plays an important part in creating a safe, friendly, happy and peaceful atmosphere for children during lunchtime. It also gives them some feeling of responsibility. Not only do they help to make the playground a happy place for all the children, they also offer great help to the staff on duty at lunch.
Playleaders
At St Chad’s School, we encourage children to develop as individuals. One of the ways we try to encourage this is a ‘Play Leading Scheme’. The scheme promotes children’s well-being, abilities, social skills and team work. It also encourages the older children to organize games for the younger children, it promotes the children’s organization, communication and responsibility skills and most importantly they all have fun!
Our play leaders volunteer their time to support the younger pupils at play times to establish a happy play time for all children. They have received training on how to deliver different games at break time. As well as delivering traditional playground games, the children have lots of play equipment to enjoy, ranging from hula hoops, skipping ropes, basketball, frisbees, and bouncy hoppers!
Another of the aims of the scheme is that it will increase the amount of physical activity undertaken during playtime/lunchtime and reduce the amount of behaviour issues on the playground. It is hoped there will be a whole school impact in terms of children’s behaviour both at lunchtime and in afternoon lessons.