Student Leadership Chaos

A new year, a new(ish) school council, yet still the same problems. Whenever we report on the school council, it is either to show the 'official' student voice being roundly ignored, or to show why it is they are ignored. Yes, it is almost an unintended consequence that the students who are picked to be on the council (and no offence to them) are the ones who normally have very few good ideas for the school (why would they? They are the ones who can't find fault with it). As such, the suggestions put forward are, as always, brilliant material.

On the agenda of the latest meeting was the usual call to 'raise [the] status of [the] SLC', or the Student Leadership Team as they have been rebranded at the behest of the Management, presumably because 'sycophants proteges' may have had some derogatory connotations. Of course, the school council gets plenty of coverage on this website, making information about them accessible to many hundreds of visitors, but we're not sure that's quite the 'status' they were looking for.

Some of the suggestions included: putting whiteboards outside (because we have a surplus of that currently. The BetDO3 odds on a cock being drawn on one in the first 3 seconds of them being there are currently 1/1), a bucket of tennis balls to be made available for pat-ball players (because they would last all of five seconds), badges and/or special ties for the school council in an attempt to 'raise' that 'status' (or be consistently bullied, as is the more likely case), and public speaking classes for school councillors. That last suggestion was evidently made by someone who is such a bastion of public awareness that they didn't realise the school has its own debating society where students can learn those skills (which they won't need since the school council rarely speak publicly) at no cost to the school, the money of which can be put towards erecting a giant anatomically correct phallic statue in what remains of the grounds to aid students in their outdoor-whiteboard-life-drawing-classes.

Then came the next topic proposed by the school, which seems to be somewhat motivated by last year's drive to instil rights respecting language (despite what we have written about the Head's previous endorsement of 'fruity language'), asking student councillors how they can encourage 'intrinsic' positive 'behaviours', the school evidently unaware that something that is 'intrinsic' cannot be encouraged, as by the definition of 'intrinsic' is already there.

The only salient points that seemed to be made were, as with any school council, about the lunches at the school, since food is more important than an education. The age old points about shrinking portion sizes (“DON'T SHRINK THE JELLIES!!!”) and quality control were added to by the notion, again made by us last July, that there is no reason as to why lunch should only be a half hour.