On Thursday 19 May 2022 our Y4 and Y6 school council reps attended CACoT Trust Children’s Forum at Swalecliffe Primary School.

The event was hosted by Ben Cooper, Executive Headteacher of Swalecliffe Primary School and all CACoT schools were represented. This involved children from Y2, Y4 and Y6 supported by Y7 and Y8 students from Herne Bay High School.

The topic of conversation was the current cost of living crisis.

The aim of the event was to get children involved in contributing to the CACoT Trust Board’s future plans by sharing their ideas for how all our schools can work together to support the local community in Whitstable and Herne Bay in these difficult times.

There were 3 outside speakers, Chris Cornell-  Councillor for Whitstable and a governor at Swalecliffe Primary School and Peter and Liam from Canterbury food bank.

The council reps were informed about a number of local schemes and organisations who are working to support families affected by this crisis, such as Riverside community Church, Canterbury Food Bank and Clothing bank, The Magic wardrobe, Whitstable cafes supporting a ‘Pay it Forward’ scheme and the Warm Spaces programme.

There were then 2 discussion sessions held whereby the council reps worked with peers from other schools to put forward questions to the speakers and then ultimately vote on ideas generated to support our local community further.

One powerful piece of information gained yesterday was that there is a food bank App- Food Bank Central. We were amazed to hear it helps you locate places that hold food banks as well as notify you which items are in short supply each time you enter a shop.

At the end of the morning, 3 school council reps were selected at random to attend the next Head Teacher meeting in January 2023 in order to report back on the event and announce the idea voted for.

Amelia Hills (Y6) will be one of the 3 representatives at that meeting.

The DfE recently announced that all state-funded schools will house a community defibrillator by the end of the school year. We have been fortunate to have a defibrillator on-site for the last 5 years and was especially glad to do so when it was needed for a member of the local community who was taken ill in the street.

Unfortunately, the life of our defibrillator has come to an end and we need to replace it. We could have waited until the DfE provided one as part of their programme but, as we have already experienced, when someone’s life is at risk, a defibrillator is crucial.

This week, the children have been taking part in a sponsored event, raising money towards a new defibrillator. To coincide with last weekend’s London Marathon, the children were challenged to see how many times they could run a 100m stretch in 26 minutes. 42 lengths/2.6 miles was their aim: a mini – marathon!

We are so proud of the effort put in by the pupils this week.  They were taken out in their classes to run with the aim of reaching 2.6kms.  I’ve heard that many children reached this distance and some ran even further! Congratulations and thank you to all who took part.  We will continue to collect sponsorship money until the end of next week, Friday 14^th October.  Fingers crossed we have raised enough for the defibrillator.  We’ll let you know the total next week.

This morning we had the CEO of Solar For Schools visit us to officially hand over our new solar panel array. We are now officially producing power to our school and any extra unused electricity is fed back into the national grid.
The children used this opportunity to ask the CEO lots of questions about renewable energy, carbon production, and energy use. He was very impressed with their knowledge! One thing that surprised us all was that it takes one person cycling for 8-10 hours a day to produce 1kw of energy. Just think about that the next time you boil your kettle!