A huge congratulations to our 2025 school leaders! See Prefects and Tuākana 2025 for details.

Purpose: To promote the student body’s voice, solve problems, and positively impact the school community.

Functions of the Student Council:

• To provide a forum for student concerns
• To provide a platform for ideas and discussion to grow
• To provide opportunities for students to initiate and accept responsibility for student-led activities
• To promote communication between the year levels
• To problem solve, act and (potentially) raise funds for Student Council projects.

Roles and Responsibilities of the Student Council Members

House Captains: 

• Keep a record of meeting attendance and share it with deans/teacher rep
• Record and share the minutes of each meeting
• Set dates of Student Council meetings
• Communicate with Student Council representatives
• As required, communicate with form teachers, deans, senior management, and principal.

Teacher Representative: 

• Support the Student Council and action issues as necessary
• Enter the names of each Student Council representative into Kamar for the end-of-year reports
• Liaise with staff on behalf of the Student Council to support their work
• Enter attendance at meetings into Kamar after each meeting.

Student Council Representatives:

• To collect ideas and thoughts from classes in relation to the work of the School Council before each meeting
• To report back to their form class about the work of the School Council after each meeting
• To express the views, issues and concerns of peers to the School Council
• To liaise with their teachers about appropriate times to meet with classes to discuss School Council business
• To ensure their class is aware of information in school notices
• To promote School and House activities and events
• Attend all meetings (if unable to attend, please email the House Captain and, if possible, organise a replacement class member to attend).

Board Student Representatives

• Attend all meetings and be aware of student feedback for the Board

Election Process: 

A voluntary or elected position (at the discretion of the form class student body) is decided annually in February. Each form class has one person who attends the Student Council meetings, and they may have a ‘deputy’ who attends if the Student Representative is absent.

Meeting Structure:

• Roll
• House Captains: Recap of last meeting, review actions taken and provide updates
• Feedback from Student Representatives
• Promotion of school activities/discussion
• Goal setting, establishing an action plan and allocating people to follow up as required
• Any other business
• Confirm the date of the next meeting.

Meeting Time: Held during form time, once every two to three weeks during Terms 1, 2 and 3 (on House assembly weeks). Dates are to be decided by House Captains and agreed upon by student council members on a term-by-term basis.

Personal attributes/ skills required of Student Council Members:

• Leadership skills
• Ability to relate well to different types of people
• Ability to communicate clearly with peers, Council members and teachers
• Attention to detail
• Personal integrity
• Support the Westlake Girls High School values
• Understanding of and respect for different cultures
• A willingness to develop skills such as confidence, communication, and negotiation
• A good listener
• A sensitive speaker
• Trustworthy
• Helpful
• Committed
• Reliable
• Honest
• A good role model
• Able to work in a team
• Ability to share good ideas
• Ability to discuss and not argue.

Outcomes: ‘Student Council Representative’ will be listed on members’ school reports at the end of the year (provided the member has achieved 75% attendance at meetings and fulfilled their responsibility as Class Representative).