At Kestrel Mead, we place great value in providing our children with a voice and giving them the confidence to use it.
We are a Voice 21 school, meaning that we teach oracy within as we recognise that this is a valuable tool for learning; enabling children to become effective speakers and listeners, which enables them to better understand themselves and the world around them. This is woven through all aspects of the curriculum, including Votes for School. Votes for School is a weekly programme, which poses an age-appropriate topic question each week, which is then debated. Throughout the week, children will learn information about the topic that is being discussed and then vote on whether they agree or disagree with the questions.
At the beginning of every year, children are provided with the opportunity to nominate themselves for one of four democratically elected roles:
- Primary Leadership Team Leader
- Primary Leadership Team Deputy
- Eco Leader
- Wellbeing Leader
Throughout the year, these children listen to the voices of their class and feedback to the other leaders to affect change across the school.
We reward children for demonstrating our core values of curiosity, compassion, respect and resilience through dojos. Children will earn badges throughout their time at Kestrels and aspire to earn ambassador status in year 6.
The Primary Leadership Team are representative of our school community, which is inclusive of all backgrounds, voices, and identities. The Team have been chosen by their peers through election. Each year The Primary Leadership Team meet to create an action plan of everything they would like to work on this year, both in school and within the community, as well as alongside the other TMET primary schools. The team will regularly meet with Miss Smith (Juniors) or Miss Bhima (Infants) and will have the opportunity to feedback the thoughts and ideas from their classes as well as working towards the actions for the year. The Primary Leadership team complete some amazing activities within the community and help in whole school events that represent all cultures within our school, as it is something that they are incredibly passionate about.
At the start of each academic year, Eco-leaders are elected in each class from Years 1-6 through an election process (votes) by the pupils in each class. Each year, the Eco-leaders will work together to create an eco-friendly school. The elected Eco-leaders will collaborate and devise an action plan to improve the school and priorities this year. Eco-leaders in KS1 will also ensure Travel Tracker is completed daily in their class and at the end of each month they will distribute badges to children who have made sufficient active travels for the month resulting in earning a badge. Furthermore, they will promote walking, scooting, biking or park and stride to school daily rather than driving or using a non-eco-friendly mode of transport. In addition to this, links will be made with external agencies such as Sustrans to educate children about being more eco-friendly, promote campaigns to encourage children and parents to be more active and create workshops for children to build their confidence and skills in making educated, environmentally sustainable choices.
Click here to see our Eco Leaders
Spotlight
We recognise that children’s mental health is an extremely important factor in the wellbeing of our pupils, therefore we appoint a group of Wellbeing leaders each year. At the beginning of the year, the leaders meet to decide on what they want to work on throughout the year to improve our wellbeing offer. Leaders will meet regularly to feedback ideas and thoughts from their class as well as working together on their action plan for the year. As well as this, the wellbeing leaders will help children to make friends and play with them at breaktimes and lunch times, take part in school-wide events such as anti-bullying week and promote the key values in our school.
When children have acquired each of their character badges, they work towards ambassador status, where they receive a tie and a role within the school. These include:
- Sports ambassador
- Library ambassador
- Reading ambassador
- Teacher PA
- STEM ambassador
- Playground ambassador
- Lunchtime ambassador
- Assembly ambassador
- Sticky Curriculum ambassador
Children become role models and the jobs they carry out support the wider school and community, raise aspirations and develop oracy and confidence. This helps them to develop independence in preparation for their secondary transition. We celebrate this status with a ‘This is your life’ style assembly.
Why do I want to be an ambassador?
Year 5:
- I think I’m kind and I can help people if they need it. I think I will be a good role model and I want to help people to make the right decision to stop bullying.
- I would like to show everyone how to follow rules. I can take pride in the school and be proud of myself. It’s an important responsibility and it takes a lot of work to become an ambassador.
- If I were a school ambassador, people would look up to me and I could inspire people. Helping around the school would be a good achievement and I would be proud of myself.
Year 6:
- I enjoy being a school ambassador, it’s a great responsibility and I really enjoy my job as a reading ambassador. I read with the younger children, and I see an improvement over a short amount of time. I love being able to teach them.
- Becoming an ambassador is a good thing and you would miss out if you left without having the chance to become an ambassador.
- I am excited to become an ambassador to help people out and make the school a better place.
- I want to be the best I can be and to show everyone that I am a role model. I can represent the school more and encourage people to be the best they can be.
Our school ambassadors are:
Be The Best That You Can Be