Footballs & Frisbees Teaching Students Responsibility

Last week the playground shop arrived in Lower School. Conceptualised by Pupil Council, the idea of running a shop was created to address two issues -wanting more things to play with and finding a way to help children look after the resources they are given.

Pupil Council designed their own bank notes (KAS Bucks) and then shared a set amount with each class. On Friday representatives from each class were allowed to go and buy playground equipment for their class from the shop.

Head of Lower School, Karen said: “By creating ownership we hope to create more responsibility. This was a huge piece of work for Pupil Council and we are grateful for the hours they have put in from creating the initial idea, looking through equipment catalogues, designing and making the money and setting up the shop.”

Charlie Y5: “We realised that a lot of people weren’t taking care of the playground equipment so we wanted to do something about that.”

Marnie Y5: “We created KAS Bucks and gave 100 KAS Bucks to each class because we don’t want to just be able to buy everything on the stall. Also the stuff is priced differently so footballs are more expensive than smaller items. We hope that if people realise that they can’t just get a replacement item straight away, they’ll take better care of the equipment in the first place. If you lose a football you’ll learn from that.”

The students have ambitions to expand the scheme and we’ll check back in to see how it’s going in a few weeks.