Pupils

House Teams

On joining reception, each child is allocated to one of our four houses: Dragon, Griffin, Phoenix or Unicorn

Each house has the same mix of ages and boys/girls and siblings are allocated to the same house team.

House captains are elected by all house members each autumn term. Candidates (from year 6) must deliver a speech to support their election.

Children compete for their houses on Sports Days.

House-points are awarded each day by staff to individual children demonstrating excellent behaviour or work.

Every week, House captains count the House-points from across the school and the winning House is announced in our weekly achievement assembly.

 School Council and Pupil Voice

Our job is to meet on a regular basis and come up with new ideas to make our school a better place for learning and having fun. 

We try to meet once every fortnight and we think of things to improve the school and then put our ideas and plans into action 

Pupil voice is very important to us at Pelham. The School Council consists of one child per class from Years 2-6. Children are elected to be School Councillors by their class and they represent the class for the full year.

Through the School Council, a charity is chosen to be supported each term. One charity will be a local one, another a national charity and the third, a global cause. At the meetings, children have the opportunity to share suggestions made by their peers. Each class has a Suggestion Box.

The fortnightly Class Council feedback sessions, led by the School Councillors, are run through our digital platform of Google Classrooms, with a virtual classroom, videos and website links accessible to all classes.

Peer Mediators

At Pelham, the children in Year 6 have the opportunity to be Peer Mediators. Our Peer Mediators are friendly and approachable children others can ask to help them whilst they are in the playground.  Easily identifiable in their hi-vis vests, their responsibilities include organising and teaching playground games, playing with children who might be by themselves or perhaps feeling sad, and helping with friendship problems. Peer Mediators work with other children towards achieving a successful resolution for everyone in order to avoid further conflict.

All our Peer Mediators complete a training programme specifically designed to support them in developing the skills required for this role, including listening and knowing when it is okay to peer mediate and when they should ask an adult for assistance.  

As well as helping to make the playground a happy, safe space, it is also hugely beneficial for our Year 6 mentors.  This role enables them to learn to take responsibility for their own behaviour, be responsive to their peers, improve their communication skills and be fair and impartial, all of which are important qualities that will stand them in good stead as they transition to Secondary School.

Rights Respecting Schools

Pelham Primary School is a Rights Respecting School therefore we believe in the importance of children’s rights.  The UNICEF UK Rights Respecting School Award (RRSA) is something that we are striving towards, because it offers a positive and preventative approach to addressing challenging behaviour, which encourages mutual respect and empowers children.

Based on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, this approach enables us to put children’s rights at the centre of everything that we do; to improve the wellbeing of the individual and to develop every child’s talents and abilities to their full potential.  In our school community, children’s rights are learned, taught, practised, respected and promoted. We believe this will help our pupils become confident, caring and responsible young citizens both in school and in the wider community and world in which they live.

We learn about rights by putting them into practise every day in school.  We model rights and respect in all of our relationships, whether it be between adults and pupils, between pupils and between adults. Our class based charters will be developed to be our class rules.

As part of our RRSA journey we have a steering group, made up of staff, parents, governors and interested stakeholders. If you would like to join our steering group please get in touch with our school office. Please consider joining the steering group, as your views and support would be most welcome.