Tollgate Primary School

Pupil Voice

School Council

At Tollgate, our School Council plays an important part in decision making at our school.

Each class democratically elects one member to stand as a Council representative for the year. We meet every fortnight, on a Tuesday, to discuss issues around and about the school, including fundraising.

School Council representatives are looking into what children love about the school and what we should continue doing, as well as how to improve the school. They will also be voting on what extra play equipment their classes would like the school to provide.

The School Council have voted in favour of making a suggestion box to put by their display near the school office. This is so that even if a child feels that they do not wish to speak to a representative then they can put recommendations, suggestions or issues they wish to be discussed in the box.

The School Council are voted for by the pupils and are here to represent the pupils of Tollgate.

Eco Council

At Tollgate, our Eco Council is made up of one pupil from each class. Eco Council representatives, known as Eco Warriors, were voted for by the children in their class. The warriors bring any ideas, issues and suggestions forward to our monthly meetings.

At our meetings we discuss how we can help with our schools carbon footprint. This year, Eco Council have decided to focus mainly on energy, waste and litter. We will be looking at saving water and energy, and recycling more within the school.

Eco Schools Bronze Award!

Tollgate was awarded the Bronze Award from Eco Schools in April 2018. Our Eco Warriors worked very hard to achieve the award setting out the foundations to become a fully fledged Eco School.

Some of the key areas we had to demonstrate in order to gain the award were:

  • To have an Eco Council that meet regularly and are made up from all members of our school community, including a school governor. To ensure that the minutes from our Eco meetings are displayed on the Eco board.
  • To devise an action plan and implement this across the school throughout the year. This includes reducing energy usage by carrying out audits on our classrooms; reducing water waste by providing posters in the toilets, as well as placing reminders by light switches ensuring we only use lights if necessary.

We are now working towards the Silver Award and to do this we need to complete an Environment Review. We will also be working towards getting Eco Council topics into our curriculum and involving the wider community in our activities.