Authors: Charles Moyo
Abstract: A student council also known a student union or associated student body is a curricular or extracurricular activity for students within elementary and secondary schools around the world. These councils are present in most public and private K-12 school systems across the United States, Canada, systems across the United States, Canada, Greece, Australia and Asia. Student councils often serve to engage students in learning about democracy and leadership as originally espoused by John Dewey in Democracy and Education, 1917. The student coun-cil helps share students’ ideas, interests and concerns with teachers and school principles. They often also help raise funds for school-wide activities including school events; communi-ty projects helping schools participate in food drives fundraisers and parties. Many members learn skills that were an extension of their formal education. Student councils operate in many forms. These are representative- based and modelled loosely after the US congress, or based on Executive Branch of the United States with a president, vice president, secretary, treasurer and reporter. In this form student representatives and of-ficers are usually elected from and by the student body, although there maybe prerequisites candidly or suffrage. In elementary schools, there are typically one or two student representatives per class room and one presiding set of officers. However, many secondary schools have one set of officers per grade level. In some schools, a student council representative is assigned to each class. That person passes on requests, ideas and complaints from students in that class to the student council. In other schools, the elected class officers are automatically members of the student council. Student councils usually do not have funding authority and generally must generate their op-erating funds through fundraisers such as car washes and bake sales. Some councils have a budget from the school, along with the responsibility for funding a variety of student activi-ties within a school. The purpose of the student council is to give students an opportunity to develop leadership by organizing and carrying out school activities and service projects. In addition to planning events that contribute to school spirit and community welfare the student is the voice of the student body. In order to explore the effectiveness of student councils in school management this study fo-cused on a survey of Five (5) secondary schools in kalomo suothern Zonal cluster. The overall objective of the study was to explore whether student councils exist in secondary schools. The specific objectives were to identify how they contribute to the smooth running of schools and establish the extent to which pupils were involved in the school events in the school events in secondary schools in kalomo District. In collecting data, a self-administered and highly structured questionnaire was employed to a total of hundred teachers from a cluster of ten secondary schools of Kalomo District. A sim-ple random sampling was used to select the respondents which included some Head teachers, Heads of department, head boys and girls, and pupils.
