We had a fabulous day at the Trust central offices as we held our first face to face Pupil Parliament session of the year. It was themed on how to be a respectful, active citizen. Unfortunately technical issues meant that we only had Rendlesham and Winterton with us online for a short amount of time but the other trust schools were in attendance.

We spent lots of time discussing what it means to be an effective collaborator in our schools, looking at what this looks like for staff and for children. This led to some great discussions involving how we should treat each other and how we need to be very clear about our reasons for doing things.

We also had a debate entitled “Only big actions can make big differences” where the majority of the room decided that they disagreed with this statement and thought that small actions can have a big impact too. They discussed lots of examples of this and focussed largely on positive impact and changes. However. They also discussed the idea of negative actions having far reaching consequences too so it was very thought provoking and led to challenging conversations. 

Most of the afternoon was spent with each school sharing their ideas of their local heroes who have raised money for charity or made a difference in their communities, locally, nationally and globally.

As well as drinking too much tea and eating all the biscuits, the children seemed to really enjoy the experience and collaborated effectively. I look forward to hearing about any further work in their school communities.

Written by: Steph Hawes, Academy Head, Greenfields