Student Leadership Opportunities

At High Tunstall we pride ourselves on the involvement of students in all developmental areas of College life. The key aim of Personal Development is to encourage greater: Awareness; Action; and Appreciation. Therefore, students taking an active role in the College Life is at the forefront of our ethos and values.

This section details Student Leadership opportunities and how students can become involved:

Student Leadership Structure:

The High Tunstall Student Leadership structure is four-pronged structure. The elements are:

• The Student Cabinet – This is the executive body made up of the Head Boy, Head Girl, Deputy Head Boy, and Deputy Head Girl. They each bring to the table the priorities they were elected on and prioritise as a team, these policies, over the academic year working with other College change-makers such as SLT and Governors.
• The Student Teams – These are teams made up of prefects whose role it is to do further research and then plan work and enact policies around particular areas of College life. These areas include: Environment; Rewards; Welfare; Evenings and Events; Communications; Enrichment; and Student Voice.
• The House Councils – These are the devolved teams within the 4 Houses at HTCS. Among their roles, they plan and deliver work for the House and the House Leader, they collate whole-school student voice and they support the policies of the Cabinet and Student Teams.
• Student Voice – This is the whole student population and how they democratically feed into the system. Student Voice is gained in a variety of ways but is the essential part of the Colleges policy development.

How to be a prefect or part of the HTCS Student Leadership body:

Student Prefect opportunities at present occur across Years 8 and 9 for Junior Prefects and Year 11 for Senior Prefects. In the other years, students are encouraged to play an active role in College life to build up a portfolio of evidence to support applications for such a post. The process for applying for such a role can be seen below:

Junior Prefect & Senior Prefect Application Process

The process of applying for both Junior and Senior Prefect roles is almost identical. The process involves:

• A launch of the roles and responsibilities
• Head of House informal conversations/Q&A with students
• Application form and single-side A4 letter of application to be written based on the roles, suitability and considerations of behaviour, attendance, active participation etc.
• Shortlisting and Interviews
• Success meetings

Student Leadership Duties

As part of their role, all Junior and Senior Prefects should do a duty once per week at a designated area to support Staff teams and their peers at break-time and lunch-time. Such duties are monitored and students are encouraged to talk to students, listen to concerns and model good behaviours.

 Student Leadership Teams

Students once in role play, complete duties and lead House Councils. The other main part of their role is to volunteer and participate in Student Leadership Teams to research particular policy areas they are passionate about in college and develop/implement changes once agreed with SLT and Governors. Current Leadership Teams are as follows:

Student Democracy

All students also get many opportunities to have their say at different levels:

• College – via student voice, student interview panels, key policy votes
• Local – Presentations to Local Authority
• Mock-National – Mock elections, referendums etc.
• National – ‘Make Your Mark’ Youth Parliament elections
• Local, National, International – via active Citizenship projects