On 18 June the schools of the Broughton Cluster visited the City Chambers to celebrate the cluster becoming the first in school in which each school has received the School of Co-operation Awards. Schools in the Broughton Cluster are:
- Broughton High School
- Ferryhill Primary School
- Flora Stevenson Primary School
- Granton Primary School
- Stockbridge Primary School
Read about the work of the Broughton Cluster in a previous post on Bright Futures.
For this special event we have recruited the help of some student reporters!
You can read their stories of the event at the bottom of the page, while here Morag Pendry, Development Manager for CETS, reports from the event at the City Chambers.
The pupils were taken on a guided tour of the building before the event to celebrate their innovative year long co-operative project. The project was initiated because of the commitment of the City of Edinburgh Council to become a ‘Co-operative Capital’.
The schools spent the year looking at the co-operative values and principles and finding out that there were three main ones they all thought really important:
- self responsibility
- honesty
- caring for others.
These became the cluster community values. Forming a Co-operative Learning Community meant that two pupils from each school were selected to attend cluster pupil council meetings and report back to their school. The pupils also took turns at visiting each other’s schools and giving their guests a guided tour showing that what they did reflected learning about the three main values they were focusing on.
The culmination of the year’s work was them coming along to the City Chambers to present and share with us how we can go about improving and developing their ideas to support all of the capital’s schools forming such values-based learning clusters.
After a surprise visit from the Lord Provost and a welcome from Councillor Paul Godzik the pupils gave their presentations. The individuals treated to the pupils presentation were:
- Andrew Burns, leader of the Council
- Hugh Donnelly, Director of CETS
- Maria Lloyd, Education advisor to the councilors
- Joyce Rochford, Senior Quality Improvement Officer
After the presentations, there was an opportunity for everyone to share their thoughts on what was good , what could be improved and what was interesting about the project.
‘Honesty’ was much in evidence and the one thing we all learned was that Ferryhill had the best school playground in Edinburgh as everyone wanted a playground like theirs… I hope the Councillors were listening hard as I think they may be getting lots of planning applications and requests for funding!
Broughton High’s Co-operative Highlight
by Saskia and Justin in S1 at Broughton High School
Throughout the year, we as the cluster pupil representatives, visited other schools in our cluster, it was great to see what different schools were like. Pupils at the schools we visited, gave us a guided tour and told us what sort of things they had been doing.
To end our year of being co-operative cluster pupil representatives, we were invited to the City Chambers to give a presentation. We were really looking forward to going as it is exciting to go to new places. There was also the added bonus of having a day out of school (Justin’s comment!).
We arrived by taxi and met all the other cluster pupil council members in the main reception, it was good to see them all again. We were taken up, by Cllr Paul Godzik, to the room where we were to give our presentations.
We watched a video showing Broughton’s highlights for 2013-14 and then the Lord Provost came in to meet us. He was wearing his gold chain that had an owl with ruby eyes on it and it also had diamonds and was solid gold. He told us that it was kept in the safe when he wasn’t wearing it and he gave all of us a badge that only people who had done something for the community would get.
We then had a guided tour of the City Chambers and the most interesting thing was in the European room full of paintings which told the history of Scotland.
After the tour we went back to the meeting room and listened to each other’s presentations, which were really good and then we had a discussion with the leader of the council, Andrew Burns who then presented us with a plaque to say that Broughton High was a ‘Pioneer in Co-operative Education’ school.
Overall it has been a really good start to the cluster pupil council and we would really recommend it to anyone else.
Granton’s Big Day Out
by Amber and AJ from Granton Primary
AJ and I (Amber) got chosen to be the cluster pupil council representatives because we behave well and we would be a good example for our school.
We really enjoyed being the representatives because we got to fun things like Fair Trade at Flora’s and Expressive Arts at Broughton High and play in the playground at Ferryhill. If we get a chance to host a school next year, we would like to show them how we are really good at maths at Granton Primary, because we get trips and prizes if we do really well.
To get ready for our presentation at the City Chambers, we took some photographs and video with our iPad to put in our PowerPoint. We showed it to our class and asked for their advice. They told us what could be improved, so that it would be really good. We think our presentation was really good because we also had our class singing ‘The Granton Song’ at the end.
On the day of the visit to the City Chambers we got a taxi with Ferryhill Primary and I ate my lunch on the way there, because we had to be ready for the guided tour at 12.15pm.
We met the Lord Provost and got a badge for him that is special because it has the same picture on it that he has on his chain and not everyone gets one of these badges. We really enjoyed the tour, especially when we got to act out some of the stories we saw on the pictures.
I was a bit nervous about doing our presentation but it was fine because everyone was quite relaxed and it all went well.
The best bit of the day for me (AJ) was feeling the provost’s chain, and the best bit for me (Amber) was looking down the very deep stairwell.
We think there should be more people on the council so they can learn all the things we did this year.
Co-operating At The Chambers!
by Alice and Rueben from Stockbridge Primary
The Broughton Cluster came together to show other schools what they do co-operatively. Reuben and I (Alice) were both chosen to represent Stockbridge Primary School in the Cluster Learning Council.
When we first got chosen a year ago to go to Broughton High, we were a little bit confused and slightly clueless as to what was going on. But luckily Mr. Fletcher, the Cluster Pupil Coordinator, explained what the Cluster Learning Council was and what we were going to be doing for the next year and onwards. We were both slightly shocked to be chosen for such an important task and hoped we would do good job representing our school.
I was really looking forward to getting to know children from other schools and not just competing against them. The only times we usually meet is when we have a competition or a big sporting event with prizes, so it was good to just mix and chat to each other.
The culmination of the year’s tasks was leading up to the visit to the City Chambers. When we first found out we were going, we were excited but slightly apprehensive as to what was waiting for us there. However, we were pleased we were going to get the chance to have a voice in the Council and share our true thoughts about all the different schools.
When we arrived at the City Chambers, we met the Lord Provost and he was wearing his gold chain. We had a guided tour around the Chambers, which was interesting because each painting there seemed to have a story behind it. We came back and did our presentation to the councilors and the other schools.
It was a fun day and we hope the next group gets to have as much fun as we did.
