School Parliament

Welcome to our School Parliament. At Bussage, School Parliament gives our children a voice in shaping the life of our school and helps them understand the importance of democracy and citizenship. It also provides the opportunity for our Year 6 pupils to develop key leadership, communication and organisational skills.

'Pupils make a difference in this school.' SIAMS report, Autumn 2024

What are the School Parliament Ministries?

The Parliament is divided into five ministries: Values Ambassadors, Charity Ministry, Eco Ministry, Learning Detectives and Sports Ministry. The five ministries meet together regularly to:

Share the views of their classmates and think of new ways to make our school even better.
Work alongside members of staff and governors to turn their ideas into action!
Plan and lead events to achieve change and bring our school community together.

Who takes part in School Parliament?

Our parliament provides opportunities for students from Year 1 to Year 6 to represent other students and have a role in working to improve the school.

All Year 6 pupils are part of one of the five ministries in School Parliament. Pupils in Years 1-5 volunteer to be class representatives for the ministries. A member of staff supports and guides each ministry, ensuring that all children have a chance to contribute ideas and have the tools they need to achieve their goals.

Who leads the School Parliament?

The Parliament is led by our two co-Prime Ministers who are Year 6 pupils directly elected by the whole school. Pupils who wish to put themselves forward for the role of Prime Minister will make a speech to the school early in the autumn term and then all pupils vote for the candidate they feel would represent them best. The Prime Ministers then lead the school Parliament for the year with the help of Mrs White and Mrs Taylor (Governor).

When does school Parliament meet?

Full School Parliament meets once a term and is chaired by the Prime Ministers, with the individual ministries meeting more regularly with their staff leaders to formulate action plans, work on projects, and check progress.

When else can pupils share their ideas?

Any pupil can take their ideas to the Prime Ministers or their class representatives outside of these meetings, and there are suggestion boxes around the school as well.

SCHOOL PARLIAMENT 2026-27

Our new Prime Ministers have been elected after fantastic speeches by five wonderful candidates, all of whom had brilliant ideas about how to make our school even better.

They're already busy with putting some of their plans into action, so watch this space for updates!

SCHOOL PARLIAMENT 2025-26

What have we achieved this year?

After another busy year, the different ministries have all made a real positive impact to the life of our school:

ECO MINISTRY

Held a 'No Electricity Afternoon', and challenged each class to switch off all electrical equipment and enjoy lessons outdoors.

Enjoyed taking part in and creating a range of Eco Challenges, from the Cut your Carbon Challenge, to the Big School Birdwatch. It was lovely to see how many people in our school community got involved to make greener choices every day.
The Eco Ministry met with Councillor Gill to discuss the problem of litter in our local area and shared our ideas about how we can work together to make a difference. As part of the 'litter pickers for little pickers' scheme, we were given 15 new litter pickers and a range of books with important eco themes. We celebrated by taking a litter picking trip to our local area, helping to keep our community clean.
This year (2025/26) we achieved a distinction in our Green Flag award, we will continue to make our school as eco-friendly as possible, as we are aiming to be Climate Friendly School by 2027, by following our Climate Action Plan.

CHARITY MINISTRY

Raised funds to support Remembrance Day, Children in Need and Comic Relief.
We also donated many food items to the Chalford Parish Council Food Bank at Harvest
We participated in the shoe box appeal for the Teams4U charity, collecting 69 shoeboxes packed with gifts to bring joy to children around the world.
Our families were very generous and we are proud to have contributed as much as we did.

VALUES AMBASSADORS

Helped lead special worships, including organising stunning artwork from all classes for the Harvest and Easter services.
Embedding a new school prayer, and organising a competition to produce artwork for it over the summer holidays.
Encourage children to share their Ow’s, Wow’s and Now’s in class
Designed a big, permanent display that shows all of our school’s Christian values and cornerstones clearly all year round, with the values board in the hall to celebrating the work from each class..

Prime Ministers 2025-2026

This is their report after chairing the first whole school parliament meeting this year:

Whole School Parliament Meeting - Autumn 2025

On the 23^rd of October, we held our first parliament meeting where we discussed with each ministry their action plans. We started with Charity who shared that they were hoping to achieve:

A sponsored walk challenge where each class will walk the perimeter of Gloucester. This will be a joint fund with, Diabetes UK and Allsorts
A cake sale to raise money for our school
Raise money for Comic Relief Red Nose day

As Prime ministers we thought these were great ideas to help our school with fundraising.

Eco Committee were next:

Eco have some green ideas to help our school be more environmentally friendly, they are :

To be awarded The Green Flag,
To open time for bird watching
To look after local wildlife and give bugs a home

We think these ideas are really going to have an impact on the environment.

Next up were our Values Ambassadors! Our Value Ambassadors have said they really want to:

Understand pupils’ opinions of worship.
They also want to get the children involved in acting out the stories during worship.
They think it could be educational to go on more RE themed trips, which is not only fun but gives our students a better understanding about different religion.

These are some incredible religious ideas to help our spiritual understanding.

Moving on, Sports Ministry were next:

Sports [Led by year 5 and 6] would like to invest in a new sandpit cover, so our sandpit can become less of a litter tray and more of a sports activity.
They would also like to update our sports cupboard by keeping it organised and making sure equipment is in reach, because it can get very messy.
Finally, they have suggested to have a rota for lunch time activities with Atlas and stations [Led by themselves] for KS1.

All of these ideas can ensure all of our students are active and fit!

Our last ministry to report was Learning Detectives.

Our Learning Detectives have mastered up some truly amazing ideas to boost our curriculum

These are:

Additional curriculum characters
To rename classes [ 1-6]
To introduce soft toy mascots for our Bussage Learning Powers which will be given to a new class each term
Our detectives have shared that they would like each class to be awarded for who best shows the Learning Power with stickers and certificates.

As Prime Ministers, we think each ministry has a strong action plan and we can’t wait to see the ideas take place!

From Emily and Siena.

Here are the action plans for each ministry for the year:

Ministry Action plans for 2025-2026

SCHOOL PARLIAMENT 2024-25

Prime Ministers 2024-2025:

These children will now have the job of taking pupil voice forward in our school, running whole school parliament meetings and monitoring the output of each ministry against their action plans.

School Parliament Action Plans 2024-2025

Here is a report from our Co-Prime Ministers about the action plans for the year.

Prime Minister's report part 1 Prime Minister's report part 2

ECO MINISTRY NEWS:

Eco Ministry have had a really productive year this year, culminating in achieving the prestigious Green Flag Award again with distinction.

Click on this link to find out about Eco achievements this year.