The Harrow College Student Council have held a meeting with college staff (on 21 Feb) to discuss key issues and explore important topics impacting the young learners.
The session, packed with over 50 students, started with an introduction from Student Union President Bella Odattil, 17, who set the agenda whilst welcoming the audience comprising of fellow students, tutors, support staff and members of the senior management team. This was followed by a welcome from Pat Carvalho, Principal and Chief Executive of Harrow College.
The students then split into groups with an ice breaker task titled ‘Harrow College represents…? In this activity, students got creative and used various stationary items to create pictures and symbols to represent what Harrow College means to them. Each group then presented their creations to the room with the all-staff judging panel deciding on their winner.
Next, it was the turn of the staff to update the Council in a segment called ‘You said, we did’. Here, key issues from the previous meeting were addressed and staff had the opportunity to discuss what progress had been made on key issues.
The groups next took part in a speed networking activity titled ‘Speak up! Meet the managers’ where each group had 5 minutes to quiz different managers from the college about issues which are important to them. Managers from many different areas including Learners Support, Quality, IT and more were represented, rotating from one table to the next every 5 minutes.
The session ended with an open forum which included the student council updating everybody on various issues with a key focus on attendance and discussing if the college can do anything to help further motivate students to learn.
Speaking after today’s meeting, Sandie Petrie, Student Enrichment Coordinator at Harrow College said “Our Student Union and Student Council is run for students, by students. Today’s meeting was a great opportunity for some important issues to be discussed by our student representatives in the presence of college staff. Discussions can now be moved forward in partnership with Student Union officers and college managers”.
Click here for more on Student Enrichment at Harrow College.