Firstly, introducing our Well-being Leaders, Lucy and Emily...

Our motivation to become the new well-being leaders stemmed from our drive to take on more responsibility and work closely with other student leaders to help have a positive impact on the school.

So far, we’ve created a variety of resources to display around the school, including posters about building and maintaining a positive mindset. These feature a selection of websites and apps (approved by the NHS) that would be appropriate to students who feel they need further support in this area. We also put together a design for a noticeboard introducing our committee within the Manor to spread awareness that we’re here to help.

Beyond this, we want to make sure the new Support Officers integrate well into the school body, so every student has someone to talk to. We also want to raise awareness around the increasing positives and negatives of technology. Although social media can be toxic and draining at times, there are many websites out there that, if used correctly, can be beneficial for teenagers. We’re very proud of our new team so far as our ideas and plans for next year are a non-stop stream of creativity.

 

Congratulations to our new Events Committee Leaders, Lily and Libby...

Throughout our time at SGGS, we've been exposed to the student leadership team in multiple ways. Listening to them talk about the exciting activities they helped organise over the years has been very inspiring for us. So, when the opportunity came to apply for this year’s Committee Leaders, we both decided to take the leap. As soon as we found out we were selected, we were relieved that our hard work had paid off and slightly nervous about what’s to come, but above all, we were really pleased to be able to make our mark on the school and contribute our ideas to support in every way we could. 

The Events Committee has unfortunately felt the effects of COVID-19 in recent times as many events have been postponed or cancelled due to the restrictions. Despite this, we’re still meeting up to brainstorm new and innovative ideas, that can be carried out online, and planning for the next school year, with the support of our two Year 10 committee members who we recruited earlier this term. After sending out a short recruitment video that explained who we are and what the job role would require, we were genuinely pleased to receive the most applicants out of all the committees. Each applicant had to send a formal letter addressed to both of us, explaining how they fit the position and what they wanted to get out of it. We came up with a set of criteria and systematically ordered the applications according to this to find our top two, who are now confirmed to be our committee members.

Many events are coming up in the last few weeks of term that we have been busy organising as a team. Although we cannot attend the events in person yet, we are working a lot behind the scenes. When the new term starts in September, we will be allowed to run our own events, mostly independently, with little input from our staff link, which will improve our organisation and teamwork skills.

 

Amelie and Tabitha reveal their plans for the Communications Committee...

 

We applied for the House Captain positions primarily because we wanted to become role models for younger students and encourage them to consider the role of Captain for themselves one day. We were also interested because we both have a keen interest in journalism, which is why we tailored our application to this committee.

So far, we’ve been involved in reviewing the school’s internal communications and making many plans for new systems within the school with a key focus being the introduction of a Stratford Girls’ Grammar School magazine. We hope to produce several issues of the new school magazine containing various engaging articles written by students and we’re hopeful that by the end of the year, more students will feel inspired to get involved and consider applying for this role in the future.

 

Welcoming our Learning Committee Leaders, Niamh and Freya...

After joining the committee, we held an initial meeting with the previous leaders so that we could continue to develop the action plans that were already in place. Since then, we have been working on several projects to improve digital teaching and learning across the school including making a handbook for Year 7s, leading a Sixth Form teaching session, reviewing homework across the school, reviewing the Teaching and Learning Philosophy, taking part in a student panel for interviewing support mentors and helping with activities around the Manor.

As Committee Leaders, we were able to help recruit the Year 10 members by selecting our top two favourite applications and selecting who we thought would help us and bring forward ideas to benefit the main school. Our plans for the rest of the year include finishing our Year 7 handbook and continuing our work on the homework review to ensure we maintain our productivity levels.

 

Next up, we hear from our new Environment Leaders, Alice and Julia...

 

As a team, we’re very passionate about the environment and excited for the opportunity to spread awareness about current issues and help make our school as eco-friendly as possible in the next academic year.

To this point, we’ve appointed two Year 10 members to support all the exciting activities we have planned for next year. With the help of our new recruits, we hope to fulfil our ambitions of supporting eco groups as an entire school body and organise second-hand exchanges within the school for equipment and resources, such as revision guides, to reduce our waste and combat consumerism while raising money for the school.

 

Sixth Form Committee Leaders, Lexy and Abi, unveil their plans for September...

 

We applied for the role of Sixth Form Committee Leaders as we wanted to give back to the school and ensure others experience of SGGS is as brilliant, if not better than ours has been.

So far, we’ve already created a booklet for the Year 11s to complete during their ‘Step into Sixth Form’ week, been involved in recruiting two Year 10s to join the committee and organised a noticeboard for all the committees to display current activities to raise awareness. We have also supported the production of a video that was shown to the Year 10s, outlining our role as Sixth Form Committee Leaders, telling them what we were looking for in our team members, and what their role would entail. Their applications required them to write a letter describing why they would be suitable for the job role and what they could bring to the committee. After reading the applications, we decided which applicants fitted our criteria best and were thrilled with our final decisions. With plans for next September already in play, we have started setting up regular meetings with our committee members as we are hoping to start producing regular newsletters/blog posts about life in the Sixth Form.

 

Stratford Girls’ Grammar School is proud to welcome all twelve new members of the leadership team and look forward to seeing their ideas and ambitions come to life in the next academic year.