Daniyal
More responsibility and power to Student Council, so that you as a student have a real say in the way the school is run. Empower student democracy and create a more actively engaged community.
Year-to-year mentoring, so that Year 12s are mentored by Year 13s applying to the same course to streamline the UCAS application process and make it more effective and less daunting for you.
An organized system for running and formation of clubs, so that you can create the clubs and societies that you want to create (e.g. societies similar to MedSoc for other subjects with external speakers and subject activities for more experience for UCAS) with an efficient process so you have more opportunities for initiatives to share their passions and to get lines in your personal statement.
A greater emphasis on student-led programs and projects so that you can go as far as you want to go and prepare yourselves for the next stage beyond Reading School.
I want to empower students to go as far as they want beyond the curriculum in their activities at Reading School through creating better systems to allow them to do this (and help you to get more lines on your UCAS).
I want to give more responsibility to the student body and encourage students themselves to organize and lead activities within the school, furthering their leadership skills and creating a Reading School community in which students actively participate and work to improve themselves and the school. I want you to have a real say in the way the school is run.
I want to create a closer internal community and a more outward-looking Reading School. During the last 2 years under Covid-19, the idea of the school community and cross-year relationships has been eroded heavily. Year group bubbles and staggered breaks/lunches have meant that interaction between particularly older and younger students has been limited compared to prior to 2020 and as School Captain I would work to rectify this by increasing the number of activities that operate across year groups.
Reform the club system. Currently there is little to no coherent system for creating a student-led club. You have to email a certain member of staff, and if you’re lucky they’ll reply to you; if you’re not lucky, you won’t get a reply at all. As School Captain I would work with the Student Council and the Senior Leadership Team to create a fully fleshed-out system for creating clubs. All the resources needed to start a club for younger years would be readily available – you’d be able to access a list of teachers willing and able to volunteer as supervisors, a list of free rooms and a list of when different year groups are free. Younger years will have access to an updating document of clubs and societies run by students.
This will be a tangible quality of life improvement for you if you want to create a club – it shouldn’t be such an ordeal to share your passion with younger years and get lines on your personal statement.
This will also strengthen the idea of cross-year ties and further reinforce the idea of a Reading School community in which older and younger students are thoroughly connected.
This will make the creation of subject-related societies and magazines (e.g. Philosophy magazine, societies similar to MedSoc for other subjects) far easier for you, allowing you to prepare yourself for the university admission process more effectively.
A similar system would be put in place for you to run electives.
Improve the mentoring system. We do have academic mentoring readily available (although some subjects do not have such a system in place which needs to be rectified), but more can be done to strengthen cross-year ties and improve the knowledge and experience that students, including us, can access to fully succeed in their school life. As School Captain I would create a ‘buddy’ system, where Year 7 students are paired to a student in Year 8, Year 8 students are paired to a student in Year 9 and so on.
This will allow you to draw on the experience of those in the year above so that you can overcome any hurdles that you face during the year.
This will go towards creating a closer internal Reading School community in which students are willing and able to help each other be the best that they can be.
This will be extremely beneficial for us – we’d be paired with a Year 13 applying to the same course as us at university. Such a pairing would allow us to find out the do’s and don’ts of the application process and overall make the university preparation process within Reading School far less daunting and far more successful and effective.
A greater focus on student-led projects that go beyond the curriculum within the school. Our school has been fairly successful in encouraging students to take part in STEM competitions like TeenTech and the Big Bang Science Fair, but there can still be a greater emphasis on students working together to go beyond the qualifications they are studying and undertake their own projects. As School Captain I would work with the prefect team to hold more events to provide you with the opportunity to go beyond the curriculum. Such events would include working with subject departments to bring in more external speakers so that students can draw on the expertise of subject specialists, holding exhibitions for student projects so that creators can get valuable feedback and share their ideas with the rest of the school community and holding smaller rounds of funding during the year if possible (along the lines of the funding scheme run by the School Captain last year, but multiple times instead of a one-off event) to ensure that students can make the most of their big ideas.
This will help create a more outward-looking student body who are more proactive and willing to think innovatively and take advantage of the opportunities that the scheme would create.
This will improve the quality of Reading School’s learning experience and also improve performance at UCAS applications through more students undertaking more independent projects.
More responsibility to Student Council. Currently Student Council acts purely in an advisory capacity to the SLT. The school wants to ‘build good men’, and the best way to do this is to give students more control and more responsibility over activities within the school through the Student Council. As School Captain I would work with the Senior Leadership Team to make Student Council more meaningful, giving it more functions within the school. A main area I want Student Council to take the lead in is the administration of clubs, societies and projects, particularly in allocating funding to these. Under a system where students apply to Student Council for activities they want to undertake, Student Council would have real responsibility and a real role within the school.
This change will give you the opportunity to actually have a meaningful say in the way the school is run and what daily school looks like.
This will encourage student democracy and participation by students in the wider school community and is a change that would truly improve the idea of a Reading School community.
By giving students more responsibility in this manner, not only leadership and teamworking skills will be improved within the student body but also accountability – accountability is something that can only be learnt when you have real control.
Through enabling students to develop these skills, this change will go towards helping students be prepared for the transition into adult life, ensuring that they have the vital capacities necessary to flourish in life beyond the school. It will actually create ‘good men’.
A student-run magazine. Currently the headmaster sends out a weekly bulletin covering activities within the school. While this has its role, your ideas and activities could be shared far more effectively if the magazine was run by students for students. As School Captain I would work with the prefect team to create such a student-run magazine, in which you send in pitches for content they want to share with the rest of the school. This could be advertising for a new club, sharing a project that you feel extremely proud of or sharing information about upcoming events. This would not replace the headmaster’s newsletter but would run alongside it, being more orientated to students themselves rather than both students and parents.
This will invest more responsibility into Year 12 students running the magazine (building important leadership and organization skills and potentially giving you another line on UCAS), as well as encouraging students to proactively share their ideas and projects with the rest of the school.
This will further improve student communication across year groups, tightening the idea of a Reading School community.
As School Captain all of the changes that I’ve outlined above would strengthen the idea of a Reading School community. Currently Years 11, 12 and 13 feel very encapsulated when compared with the rest of the school, and Covid hasn’t done anything to help the situation. With staggered breaks and lunches and fewer student-run clubs (and almost no lunch-time clubs that involve both younger and older years) the concept of a Reading School community is only that – a concept.
These changes will make that concept a reality, creating cross-year ties and encouraging students to work together across year groups to succeed in whatever areas they choose. These cross-year ties will allow you to go as far as possible in the initiatives that you choose to take part in, allowing you to share your passions and take a leadership role within the school community.
Expand the number of student-run house competitions. You should be able to create house competitions in areas that you are passionate about (e.g. table football) and then run these for younger years or for our year – not only does this allow us to share what we’re passionate about, but it also develops leadership and organizational skills. As School Captain, I’d work with the prefect and house teams to create a system of student-run Year Group Cups.
In order to avoid an increased number of house competitions distorting the house results, these student-run house competitions would be run within these Year Group Cups; results in student-run house competitions will go towards the Year Group Cup, and at the end of the year the standings within each Year Group Cup would then contribute to the overall house competition alongside other competitions like House Football, House Eisteddfod and so on.
Expand Reading School’s role within the community of young people in Reading as a whole. Our school is a leader in some areas of community service, running successful charity appeals and initiatives such as Future Stories which have made meaningful contributions to young people across Reading. As School Captain, I’d work to expand these initiatives to other schools within Reading, creating a more closely knit community of young people within the town. I would also work with the prefect team to increase Reading School’s participation with youth initiatives such as Reading Youth Council and British Youth Parliament.
This will promote Reading School as a more outward-looking member of the community within Reading. It will encourage students to be even more proactive in seeking to use their skills to improve the lives of others and in working to help and better the community that we are all members of. It will also allow you to further take on leadership roles within the community of young people in Reading.
If you vote for me, you’ll be voting for all of these changes: you’ll be voting for empowering students, giving students more responsibility and creating a tighter Reading School community. You’ll be voting for what will hopefully be lasting change and a real improvement to student life at Reading School.
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