All about our council

The school council at Portway Junior School is elected democratically and fairly. Every year, in October, we have an election day where nearly 100 pupils stand for election as either school councillors or eco councillors. We work with Test Valley Borough Council to make our school elections as close to 'real' elections as possible. It is a very nerve-wracking time for you if you want to be a councillor!

Once the Council is elected they vote for a chairperson, vice chairperson and a secretary. These people meet regularly with the deputy headteacher to plan the agendas for meetings. Our key people this year are Jessica (Chair), Tayla (Vice Chair) and Joseph (Secretary).

We have recently decided that we need someone to take on the role of Treasurer within the council and manage the fund raisers we plan. Jake has taken this role on for us this year.

Portway's school council makes the school a fun place to be! We are very active and busy in our school and help to make decisions about lots of important things. We make sure that the children's voices are heard in the school and that everyone is part of our decision making process.

We try to do the following and to encourage our classes at school to do the same. It is a quote by a man called John Wesley:

 "Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can."

We work hard to raise money for school projects as well as for other charities. Our most recent project was raising money through a sponsored walk to have our new adventure trail built on the playground. If you look at the photographs on the website, you will agree that it is a brilliant piece of play equipment for us! We have recently done another sponsored walk and will be starting to plan how we will spend that money.

Each year we choose three charities to support - a local one, a national charity and a global charity. This year our chosen charities are all linked with our school.

We have decided to support an old Portway pupil in his mission to raise money for the Piam Brown Children's Cancer Ward and we have had a dress down day and a 'bring your teddy to school' day to do this. 

Our global charity is the SOS Children's Charity - they help children who are orphaned through war to find new homes and new families. We ran a cake sale in the summer term and raised a tremendous amount of money to sponsor Mr Nice to cycle 800 miles from Krakow in Poland to Pula in Croatia for SOS. He did a brilliant job and we were very proud to be able to support him!

Our third charity will be the Katie Piper Foundation, as Katie was a previous pupil of Portway Junior school. We are in the process of planning some big and exciting events in order to raise as much money as we can to help people who suffer from burns and disfigurements and will be involving everyone in our school community, as well as our local community to do this. We are very excited about meeting Katie in person this term and look forward to keeping you up to date with our progress!

We all enjoy being councillors at Portway Junior School and feel that we make a big difference to the way our school is run. If you would like to know any more about us, then please feel free to contact the school office and arrange to come in for a look around!