We are proud to announce that we have, once again, earned this international accreditation.  This accolade recognises our amazing work in making our school more environmentally friendly and raising eco-awareness in our pupils.

Eco-Schools is an international education programme that prompts young people to explore sustainability and climate change and take action.

Working alongside Miss Green and her team, children conducted an environmental review, assessing how eco-friendly our school is. They reviewed everything from the school’s recycling practices, to energy usage, to how environmental themes are covered in classrooms. Building on their findings, the Eco Ambassadors planned a year of activities that would improve even further our green-credentials.

Their report on the school noted the following:

It's wonderful that you have appointed such a representative Eco-Committee, this shows your school’s excellent commitment to both the programme and the eco-cause. We love your democratic and fair approach to appointing Eco-Committee members. It’s great to see that other pupils played a part in the process. It was also wonderful to see that they were supported by no less than three members of staff and that a key member of the SLT was deeply involved. We love that you kept minutes from your meetings and that they helped to track, guide and prompt your activity, and thank you for including the excellent examples. It was great to see that young people were responsible for completing those meeting minutes – this helps them develop new skills! This is a mature and professional approach. Great work! It was wonderful to see how completing your Environmental Review helped to raise the level of awareness in your school and helped your Eco-Committee to identify the issues and spot gaps in your school's existing environmental activity. It was also brilliant to read that the Environmental Review helped your pupils appreciate everything that your school is already doing to benefit our environment and identify areas to work on in the future. It was great to see how you carefully considered findings from your Environmental Review and factored them into the creation of your Action Plan. A great sign of critical thinking! Your Action Plan shows that your Eco-Committee have carefully considered how they can involve their entire school in their planned Eco-Schools’ activities to achieve maximum impacts and raise awareness amongst their school community. We love the range of activities that you and your Eco-Committee planned for delivery. The fact that they cover both indoor (energy monitors and a ‘switch-off’ campaign, with awareness posters) and outdoor (regular litter-picks, growing herbs, reducing garden chemical use, improving the bug hotel, a travel survey, Walk on Wednesdays and Big Walk/Wheel to School promotions) activities is excellent. It was also great to see accountability and a monitoring scheme clearly marked in your Action Plan, although we were surprised there was no Evaluation system in place. Great work though! Your Curriculum Link examples are imaginative, practical and fun, making environmental education accessible and engaging, well done! We’re really impressed at how you’ve linked environmental issues to a variety of curriculum areas. We loved seeing the superb examples of your Schemes of Work, teaching materials and photos of your pupil’s work. This is a great example of layering in sustainability and climate change into your studies. We loved reading about how you had incorporated learning about global issues not only into the Geography and Science Curriculum (most common ones) in your school, but also into other areas such as English, Art and even RE. Great work! Your Eco-Board is great. Your board is incredibly visual and engaging and promotes your work in a very attractive way. We loved hearing how active your Eco-Committee was in communicating their activities school-wide with both assembly and class feedback and use of posters, the school newsletter and website as well as the Eco-board itself. These all combine to make a great approach! We were slightly surprised to hear that your school has no social media platform to spread the word of your good work – something to consider for next year perhaps? We are certain that your pupils will have greatly benefitted from your involvement with such outside organisations as Sustrans, the Youth Sports Trust and local councillors. The parent quote is a great testament to the work that you are doing with your Eco-Committee, that they are taking their Eco-Schools work home with them and getting their families on board is something to be proud of! We thought your Eco-Code was brilliant! It was punchy and really creative, setting out tangible and accessible calls to action your whole school can get behind! I hope you and your Eco-Committee take great pride in your achievements, when listed it's surprising how many there are – however, the improvements to your school environment with the energy saving and biodiversity initiatives and, most of all, your excellent green travel promotions (we loved those) all nicely stand out! Congratulations to everyone for the great work you have managed to do, earning your Green Flag with style. You should all be very proud of your work and the application you have submitted!

To learn more about Eco-Schools head to www.eco-schools.org.uk.