At Perivale Primary School we work hard to ensure everyone has a voice – especially the students!

We listen to what our children think, what our children say and their suggestions to make our school better. Students are the biggest part of our school community and at Perivale we provide them lots of opportunities to represent our school, to have their say and to bring about positive change. We also believe that leadership skills, even at a young age, are extremely important for the children to develop. This will allow them to succeed in later life and prepare them for life beyond primary school.

Many of our student leadership activities focus on improving the quality of teaching and learning in the classroom, taking part in student-led change initiatives and supporting the school’s vision to be ‘an aspirational community that enjoys learning and contributes to an ever-changing world.’

The aims of our student leadership programme are simple:

• To empower students to work in partnership with staff towards shared goals.
• To enable creativity to flourish as the school community benefits from the wealth of experiences,
• ideas, skills and sense of fun that students bring.
• To provide opportunities for students to develop leadership skills through a variety of inspiring, challenging and valued projects which impact positively on learning, teaching and well-being
• for both students and staff at Perivale Primary School.
• To prepare children for later life and the leadership opportunities that await them at secondary school and beyond.

There are many leadership opportunities available to students, below is a flavour of what is currently on offer.

Head Boy and Head Girl

At the start of Year 6, all of the children are given the opportunity to apply for the position of Head Boy or Head Girl. They are asked to write a letter of application based on the following job description: Head Girl and Head Boy – Job Specification.

From the letters received, children are shortlisted for a formal interview, including a presentation component. The final 3 boys and final 3 girls then carry out an election campaign with a subsequent whole school vote at ballot stations.

Our Head Boy and Head Girl are ambassadors for our school, greeting formal visitors to the school and promoting our school value of RESPECT and upholding the highest of standards at all times – embodying our school values. At Perivale, they are also involved in recruitment and helped during the interviews to appoint members of our school community, recently some of our new SMSAs. They introduced a staff wellbeing initiative called ‘Pat on the Back’ and regularly lead key stage and whole school assemblies. These children are also the leaders of ‘Perivale Parliament’ and alongside Miss MacKenzie, one of our Assistant Headteachers, create agendas and lead the Parliament meetings.

We also have two fantastic deputy Head Boy and Head Girls who work as part of the Head Boy and Girl team to run many of our whole school initiatives.

Perivale Parliament

Our Perivale Parliament includes students from Year 1 – Year 6 who sit on our school parliament. Each meeting has a clear agenda and children have a record book to keep track of their agendas, actions and information to take back to class. Perivale Parliament have run a number of very successful events this year including – World Kindness Day, Remembrance Day and were heavily involved in Children’s Mental Health Week.

During our meetings, students bring ideas for improvement areas from their peers and then can feedback in class the outcomes of the discussions. From the ideas gathered at the beginning of the school year, we created an action plan that we are working through to focus on school improvement.

A full job description can be found here: Perivale Parliament – Job Specification.

Team Captains

At Perivale Primary School, we have 5 core learning values – We are ‘RESPECTFUL’, we are ‘INCLUSIVE’, We are ‘CURIOUS’, We are ‘RESILIENT’ and We ‘AIM HIGH’. Each of the houses are represented by a famous person as below.

Malala House (Resilient) – Malala Yousef

Peake House (Aim High) – Tim Peake

Hawking House (Curious) – Stephen Hawking

Elizabeth House (Respectful) – Queen Elizabeth

Mandela House (Inclusive) – Nelson Mandela

We have elected 3 team captains per house who are responsible for organising team events, collecting team points and announcing winners in the weekly assembly. For each house, there are 3 team captains; two children from Key Stage 2 and a younger KS1 child who shadows and learns leadership skills.

These positions are appointed through a class vote.

Healthy Eating Ambassadors

We have a small team of children who have a passion for healthy foods and healthy eating. They run a number of whole school events to promote healthy eating including leading a whole school assembly and organising events for our Healthy Eating Week.
They have regular monthly meetings with our ISS manager, who provides our catering, to give feedback directly from the student body on the improvements that may need to be made around school lunches.

Playground Leaders

Our Playground Leaders are an elected group of children from upper Key Stage 2, who are involved in supporting cooperative play on the playground. Our Playground leaders with staff help devise simple playground games. This group of children also run our school ‘Tuck Shop’ which is the way that we distribute resources at lunchtimes for example: cricket sets, footballs and skipping ropes. They ensure that resources are signed out, returned and the resources are neatly maintained.

Wellbeing Warriors

Our newest student leadership opportunity is the Wellbeing Warriors. We have 8 members of year 5 and 6 and the children collaborate with each other to set up events and activities to support communities through fundraising, communication and acts of service. These communities range from the local area of Perivale, our school community and even individual year groups. The children will build social and communication skills as well as confidence through this group as they share their news with the school body in assemblies.

Travel Explorers

Our travel explorers are a group of year 4 and 5 students who were chosen to promote sustainable travel. The children are involved in and plan events that entice our school community to walk more and drive less. The children are aware that the more cars on the road the more pollution everyone in our school is exposed to. The children are actively involved in walk to school events, class competitions and auditing our school to allow us to move forward.