Opportunities for leadership
There is a range of opportunities for student leadership at St Marylebone. These include leadership in sports and performing arts and ambassador roles such as Diversity Ambassadors, Healthy Relationship Ambassadors and Mental Health Ambassadors. There are also creative, editorial and journalistic opportunities available in the production of St Marylebone publications such as NewsTues, SMSspeaks and the St Marylebone Messenger. More possibilities for student leadership are below.
Student Leadership Team
The Student Leadership Team (StLT) champions the voice and vision of our students across the school. Being part of the team is a valuable experience in teamwork and leadership, as the StLT takes on responsibility and works hard to fulfil its goals. Acting as an interface between students and teachers, and leading the School Council, the StLT brings about the change students want to see in our school community. The StLT consists of the Head Girl, Deputy Heads and House Captains. Each StLT agrees to its own goals and priorities for the year. See below for more from Head Girl Mariam Ali.
School Council
The School Council is made up of a Form Captain and Vice-Captain from every Form in the school. The Council is led by the StLT and they meet on a weekly basis. The Form representatives attend meetings and then feedback to their Form groups. They focus on a range of goals and priorities including the school environment, charity fundraising and celebrating achievement. School Council is all about creating a space for student voices to be heard, an opportunity for their concerns, commendations and priorities to have an impact on school improvement and student development. It is a valued and integral part of the St Marylebone ethos and community.
6th Form Committee
The 6th Form community is a group that focuses on 6th Form-specific priorities whilst also creating opportunities for leadership and teamwork. The 6th Form Committee focuses on the facilities for 6th Formers, arranging events (such as the leavers’ event), creating the yearbook and many others. The Committee works closely with the StLT. It is a great opportunity for the students to challenge themselves and make a positive difference.
Head Girl
The Head Girl is the leader of the Student Leadership Team. Below is a statement from our current Head Girl on her roles, responsibilities and experiences.
As Head Girl, my role entails leading the team in initiatives to improve the school and wider community, leading the team in planning and delivering school events, organising and leading StLT and School Council meetings and liaising with the staff Senior Leadership Team. With the assistance and support of the deputies, we monitor and organise the events running in school and bring to life the ideas of the School Council with the House Captains. We aim to ensure that all students have an opportunity to share suggestions and ideas on how to improve the school and ensure that we have a diverse, environmentally friendly and positive school environment.
In our socially distanced Year 13 StLT meetings, where we brainstorm ideas on how to improve the school, we split into groups to have discussions on wellbeing, diversity and the environment. Our final ideas are then shared with the School Council. We ask for the Form Captains’ and Vice Captains’ views on our ideas and discuss how we can develop them using their feedback. The Form and Vice Captains can then share these ideas with their Form groups, to get feedback from students and to inform students about what the StLT and School Council are working on.
Some of our biggest accomplishments this year include establishing the Student Channel, the Diversity Ambassadors and a curriculum of after-school activities during the period of remote learning.
Diversity Ambassadors work to achieve better and more equal representation amongst all ethnicities in our school. In their fortnightly meetings on Thursdays, they discuss issues concerning students, ways to make subjects feel more inclusive and how to make the curriculum more diverse.
The extracurricular activities were run and organised by members of the StLT on Google Meet. The clubs running were Arts and Crafts, Baking and Cooking, Gardening and Book club. With a focus on wellbeing during remote learning, we believed that having such clubs were a good way for students to disconnect from schoolwork, start a new hobby and interact with other year groups.
The StLT created the Student Channel with the aim of it being a central space for students to access useful and relevant information and resources. With a new modern and sleek look, the website aims to keep Marylebone students inFormed on the different events happening around school from extracurricular clubs and resources on diversity and inclusion, to assemblies and tannoy notices. The channel has the publications of our school newspaper “NewsTues”, our school record label “Under The Block”, the school podcasts “SMSpeaks” and more. The content on the channel is in the form of podcasts, videos and documents.
Over the past year, the StLT has collaboratively brought about these new aspects of student life. We hope that these are useful for students at St Marylebone in the future!
