Student Parliament

The Student Parliament’s role is to ensure that both the students and staff of WGS have the opportunity to have their voices heard in an elected body, designed to serve the interests of the entire school. The sense of union promulgated by such a goal is an invaluable asset which cannot be truly quantified, and we intend to keep it that way.

The structure of the Parliament itself hasn’t drastically changed from the Student Council days, but the way in which it fits into the overall organisation has been re-evaluated. In addition to the majority of forms now having three representatives instead of two, the Student Parliament now acts as more of a discussion forum, a true legislature instead of a committee.

We found that if we clearly defined the Student Parliament’s role as being to discuss the principle of a point instead of the specifics, we could afford to make it bigger, thus reaching more of the student body. This hopefully would be superior to the hybrid system we had in place before, where the Council tried to walk the line between the smaller details and the overall picture. We simply took the former out of the equation.

Student Executive

Another problem with the old Student Council was that it often dealt with points that could be considered as ‘routine’. A request for mustard in the lunch hall, for example, might be considered a simple matter, but could often get bogged down in the administrative process. The result was often an elementary point being lost in the minutes and thus unresolved, doing nothing to alleviate the apathy which had begun plaguing the council.

We needed an organisation which could act as a filter, to ‘weed out’ these points before they got to that stage and coordinate an effective response immediately. Instead of placing the item on the agenda on Friday and waiting until the next Thursday to inform the Parliament and send the Food Function Rep to investigate the issue of mustard, the Executive would cut out the middle man and have a solution to present to the Parliament and not a request.

At the same time, the Executive is responsible for the creation of an agenda. The accusation that the Council lacked direction will hopefully be alleviated by this. The Executive is currently composed of the Chair, Secretary and nine reps elected from their respective years (Big Six currently has two reps on this body), and these reps are elected for approximately three month terms, ensuring that the Executive is constantly fresh and always representative.

How we Work

Following our Reforms in 2007, the old ‘Student Council’ completely reformed its methods in the formation of the new ‘Student Parliament’. The intention was not only to raise confidence in the abilities of the organisation, but to ensure that a defined ‘Action Plan’ was in place for students to follow having raised a point of discussion.

Not only did the concept of an ‘Action Plan’ allow us to define stages which a point goes through (allowing members of school not in the Parliament to easily track the point as it progresses), it also increases accountability by requiring the Parliament to define why a point has been rejected or passed as opposed to simply allowing it to fade out of the spotlight.

The Action Plan is similarly not a rigid instrument. Stages can be bypassed or shortened if the Chair deems it prudent, allowing for more flexibility in the decision making process.

This was a key feature from the very beginning as we planned this venture. Student Council, in our opinion, suffered from a severe ‘accountability deficit’. We felt that before any reforms to structure could take place; we needed to rectify this problem. The Action Plan is simply one method by which we are attempting to accomplish this.

View the Action Plan table