Millbank Primary School
Growing Together To Be Our Best
Pupil Voice Survey
For any school interested in teaching about Rights Holocaust Memorial Day is a key event. Even today it is all to easy to read in the papers implying that Human Rights are a bad thing imposed on the UK. HMD reminds us all of what happens when we let people take away Rights.
Like schools across the world on Friday 27th January, Miss Allen gave an assembly on the importance of remembering the holocaust and the dangers of turning a blind eye when we see something we know to be wrong. Part of it is certainly remembering the genocide in WWII in the hope that if more people did, then perhaps we would not have had Cambodia, Rwanda and Bosnia. Hatred, intolerance and persecution are not a thing of the past. The people who did these terrible things were ordinary people no different to you and me.
The theme for HMD 2012 is "Speak up and Speak out" and for us was about encouraging the children to have the courage to speak out or tell someone if they hear any racist language or witness bullying. Edmund Burke (1729-1796) is often quoted as saying “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil, is that good men do nothing."
This all sounds a bit heavy but you must recall that this was also our FUN'draising day for Kenya and all the children were dressed as clowns and circus performers or 70's rockstars.
But the message obviously had an effect as one member of the School Council got together with some of her friends and produced a questionnaire which they went and asked their fellow pupils. They were not necessarily the questions that the Governors, teachers or professionals would have asked, but they did produce some interesting results. The girls typed them up and then presented them to the rest of the School Council and answered their questions.
It was quite funny to see the utter shock as jaws literally dropped when the girls told the Council that 6 pupils said that if they saw someone being bullied -they would punch the bully!
We want all the pupils to have the confidence to stand up for themselves and others but that attitude would only cause more problems. Bullying is a very complicated issue with bullies often being bullied. Being able to stand up for yourself and others as well as be able to diffuse difficult situations is a great life skills that we want to encourage in children.
The girls are going to present their findings to the School Governing Body at their next meeting.
This is very much an ongoing project but we are very proud that the girls involved have used their own time and initiative to do such smashing work. They have really enjoyed it too!
