Environmental Sustainability
Environmental Sustainability is a strategic priority in our school. Our commitment is to prepare our children so that they have the requisite knowledge, skills, resilience, agility and optimism to strive for sustainable future. First, our children will learn to value their environment – not just our beautiful local environment but the natural world in different parts of the globe. They will learn to understand how the natural world works, what impact humans can have on it, and the difference we can make through carefully choosing the future course of action. We hope to see our children take active part in the School’s own journey to carbon zero as critical partners and stakeholders.
So far as a school with have:
- Installed Solar Panels on our roof
- Changed all the lights in school to LED's
- Installed a heat pump
- Installed a very efficient romote control heating system
- Moved to refillable whiteboard pens, ECO friendly dishwasher products, ECO friendly washing-up liquid, biodegradeable wet wipes and plant based sellotape; we look for eco initiatives as they become available and make the changes where we can
Solar Panels were installed on our school roof in 2019.
ECO Workshops June 2023
During June we were delighted to welcome Philip Hunton from Green Up Your Act Education to our school for three whole days. Philip worked across the school and was really impressed with the knowledge that our children had already acquired about all manner of environmental issues and was able to move their learning and understanding on further. We were delighted to work with him.
The first session started by discussing green issues in the home, at school, and in a global context.
With the aid of an interactive presentation, children visited an award-winning building called ‘Earthship’ which is powered by renewable energy and is built from recycled materials. After exploring the concepts involved, children examined a range of up-cycled objects and finished by making a visually unique notebook from old maps, cards and recycled paper.
The second session explored the problem of litter and the effect it has on our natural environment.
The children looked at the subject of litter in the UK and examined single use plastics and their alternatives. Each pupil decorated a cork fish with colourful recycled scales they made to bring awareness to the problem of litter in our surroundings. This highlighted to children how we can all play a part in supporting a beautiful and healthy natural environment. The main aim of this workshops was to further raise awareness of the problem of litter and the effect it has on our environment.
The final day saw the children take part in the Green Shoots Workshop.
Children traced the journeys of different varieties of fruit and vegetables. They talked about how food is grown, the benefits of fresh food and the responsibility we all share to reduce the huge amount of packaging and food thrown away every day. This has helped set the scene into our upcoming Autumn Term theme ‘Field to Fork’ where we will go more deeply into this topic. Children completed this
workshop by making paper pots planted with vegetable seedlings or growing micro greens, and were shown how to make an up-cycled watering can. This activity demonstrated how easy and fun it can be to grow seasonal food and thereby reduce food miles and packaging.
