Investing in our Children

Shapla Primary School is a lovely school. On my first visit to the school, I was met very warmly at the entrance by the acting head teacher, who took me along to the ICT suite, where I waited on the children who had very kindly given up some of their time to meet with me.

II introduced myself to the children and explained why I was there. I asked them what they could tell me about their school, what they think about being part of it, asking them to tell me how they feel they are listened to by the staff within the school and what changes they feel  they have made over the past year. when I asked them about any improvements and change they wanted this is what they said:

More games and after school clubs

The children told me that they weren’t happy with the choice of game that they had available or during their break times, so they asked the teachers if they could have some new ones.

New laptops and net-books

The children told me that they had asked for new laptops for the school as their old ones weren’t very good and they needed more up-to-date programmes on them. They now have new laptops for their school council and the other classes now have new net-books.

Healthy school meals

The children told me that they now have school meals that they like and prefer to eat. They explained to me that most of the children in school, if not all, have free school dinners and so it is important to them that they have nice thing that they like on the menu.

They said that they spoke with one of the school cooks, who asked what type of foods they liked and wanted to see on the menu. They were very keen to tell me that their menu is now nice AND healthy at the same time. For example, they now have things like chicken curry and strawberry milkshake (that is made with fresh strawberries) and they still like to have salad with everything. They also said that they are only allowed a little bit of chocolate in school.