We are delighted that our school has been awarded the ‘Green flag’ status of an official ‘Eco-School’ for the third year running.
Our application this year was based around our work on the new Forest School site and aspects of healthy living.
Our assessment comments included –
‘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 fair approach to appointing Eco-Committee members. It’s great to see that you had such a group of eager, enthusiastic volunteers. 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. But equally important is that it helped you to recognise the great work that you were already doing. This helps to keep up the good activity whilst making you feel empowered to do different things. We love this! We love the range of activities that you and your Eco-Committee planned for delivery. The fact that they cover both indoor (more vegetarian meal options, joining Eat Them to Defeat Them and promoting re-usable water bottles) and outdoor (building bird boxes, creating a pond and opening a new Forest Schools area) activities is excellent. It was also great to see accountability and monitoring and evaluation clearly marked in your Action Plan. Great work! You’ve clearly embedded the ethos of the Eco-Schools programme far and wide in your school! We’re really impressed at how you’ve linked environmental issues to a variety of curriculum areas. We loved seeing the excellent examples of your Scheme of Work and lesson plan and photos of pupil’s healthy snacks and of them enjoying their activities. 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 your new Forest School curriculum. Great work!
We love that your pupils have taken their great work beyond the school gates and into their local community with your tree and seed planting initiative at the Pauline Flick Reserve. We are certain that your pupils will have greatly benefitted from your involvement with such outside organisations as the RSPB, Healthy Smiles, Banbury Foodbank, the Diocese of Oxford and the Daily Mile, to name but a few. 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! I hope you and your Eco-Committee take great pride in your achievements, when listed it’s almost astonishing how many there are – however, the real improvements to your school environment with the healthy eating and biodiversity measures and, most of all, your great nature reserve work and wonderful new Forest School area (we loved those) all nicely stand out! Everyone involved should be incredibly proud of the changes they have made. Your Eco-Code is really smart and concise. It’s a great message and its punchy nature will definitely help it be processed by everyone passing by your Eco-Board. 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!
