News & Headteacher Blogs

It will be a busy time ahead for our School and House Council members, who have put together a number of initiatives to work on in the coming months.

This year 14 students have been elected to represent their year groups as part of school council, and an additional 73 students across all year groups have volunteered to represent their tutor groups on House Council. However, due to the Covid restrictions, these teams are running slightly differently! Where we would usually see teams of students working across year groups, collaborating and sharing ideas about how we can achieve our goals, due to avoiding mixing bubbles, we are now conducting these meetings via Teams. However, these remain productive and inspiring sessions, which students enjoy being a part of.

We have two key priorities for Student Voice at The Downs this year – promoting and celebrating diversity and supporting our students with maintaining positive mental health. House Council led the way in generating ideas for both key goals, such as creating a mural that reflects the diversity of our student body and adapting key projects within our curriculum (such as The Freedom Project in Art) to give students a chance to learn about key figures from other cultures and reflect upon what diversity means to them. We are also working on celebrating food from different cultures within our school canteen. Additionally, the councils have decided to create ‘moodboosters’ which can be used during AM Registration to start the day off on a positive note, and we’ll be working to support the local charity Time To Talk with some fundraising efforts later this year.

Well done to all those involved and we look forward to following your progress.