Todmorden High School’s first SPACE (Social, Personal and Citizenship Education) Day saw the launch of the Investors in Pupil’s (IIPu) Programme at the school for Years seven, eight, ten and 11.
IIPu is a national standard which supports students in working together to set challenging yet achievable targets, and be involved in the development of their school.
The programme included lessons on target setting, the school budget, reflecting on the cost of litter and vandalism, and developing environmental responsibility.
Year seven student James Law writes about his experience of the day.
SPACE Day was first introduced in schools in 2000 to help students understand social, personal and economic issues.
Now, in 2014, Year seven have had their first SPACE Day and have really enjoyed the experience.
The day started for form group 7ADG with a talk about the school budget. Did you know that it costs £3.8 million per year to run the school? 100 per cent is spent on the students, but not all of it is spent purely on educating us.
For a student in Years seven to 11 it costs £3,952 per year. However, for a student in Years 12-13 it currently costs £4,857.
Have you ever just thrown a piece of rubbish on to the school grounds instead of putting it in the bin? Just doing that costs the school £147,904.
There was a small mountain of black bags outside the window of the canteen, and this was all of the litter that has been picked up on site in just three days. Just think what the school could be spending that money on!
A visitor called Harper spoke to Year seven about DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) and sang several well-known songs while she was there. Everyone was dancing and even Mr Hussain got involved!
Harper explained about the dangers of drugs and used Amy Winehouse as an example of what could happen.
Students had the opportunity to interview an illustrator called Polly and a police officer named Johnny. They were asked questions related to their jobs like what qualifications were needed and what they thought the best part of their job was.
Polly explained that no specific qualifications were needed to become an illustrator - just a passion for art and imagination.
Johnny explained that he had experienced being pepper sprayed in training, so he can understand the discomfort.
I hope that the next SPACE Day will be as fun and interesting as this one was.