Eco School
Eco School Leader: Charlotte Ball
Rights Links: Article 12 – Respect for the Views of the Child; Article 15 – Freedom of Association; Article 24 – Health and Health Services; Article 29 – Goals of Education
Annually, the children and staff at Sydenham Primary School work hard towards achieving the Eco Schools and Green Flag award in recognition of our work on improving the school environment.
The Eco-committee, led by Ms Ball, write an action plan to help improve the school and local environments. The plan focuses on 10 areas; Biodiversity, Energy, Global Citizenship, Healthy Living, Litter, Marine, Transport, School Grounds, Waste and Water.
Our pupil Eco Reps meet regularly to share ideas on how to improve the school environment and maintain our Eco-Code.
This is what our assessor said about our work:
Congratulations!!!
Fantastic work!
We are very pleased to tell you that you and your Eco-Committee at Sydenham Primary School have been successful in meeting the requirements for the Eco-Schools Green Flag Award.
We reviewed your application and noted the following:
Our team loved reading about the formation of your Eco-Committee this year. Your Eco-Committee were elected democratically, which is a fair and mature approach – well done to selected members on their appointment! It’s brilliant that young people were given the responsibility for recording meeting minutes. As you’ll be aware, this allows them to take ownership of the Eco-Schools programme and develop their listening, communication and teamwork skills. Next time, we’d love to see a copy of your meeting minutes to enable us to better understand the discussions that took place and the planning stages you went through! It's brilliant to read that the Environmental Review helped your pupils to appreciate and celebrate everything that your school is already doing to benefit our environment whilst also enabling them to identify areas to work on in the future. Our team enjoyed reading through the detailed comments on your uploaded review to get a sense of the current eco-situation in your school and your thoughts for future work. Great work everyone! It's clear that your Environmental Review inspired the choice of projects in your Action Plan. This is a strong approach to working on things that will produce visible impact and change, and a great example of critical thinking! We love that your enthusiastic committee selected 4 topics rather than the standard 3! Your Action Plan is strong and substantial and it’s great to see monitoring and evaluation featured here. We love the ambitious range of practical and fun activities planned for delivery this year, such as litter-picking, making posters, holding a cake sale and taking part in several whole-school events in the Transport topic. You have provided practical and fun curriculum examples, which impressively build on the projects you have worked on in your Action Plan. This is a great way to add context to your Eco-Schools work, meaning pupils at your school are given the opportunity to learn about important environmental issues and then the chance to work on these issues – a great dual approach. A particular highlight for our team was reading about Year 2’s work on Greta Thunberg and the peaceful protest they held! Thank you for sharing some lovely examples of the work produced by your pupils and photos of them engaged in their learning. We love that as a school you are using the power of social media to share your good work with the wider community. You’ve also used diverse methods to inform your school community about your ongoing projects, such as newsletters, assemblies and competitions. This comprehensive approach will help to engage others and expand the reach of your Eco-Schools work. Your Eco-Board really brought your application to life for us and it’s great to see your Eco-Committee celebrated on there – we’re sure they love the acclaim and it must be inspiring and motivating for their classmates! Your greatest successes link clearly to the experience of your pupils. Restoring your allotment, planting, harvesting and cooking vegetables, and holding a cake sale to raise money for this project, are experiences that we’re sure will stay with the pupils involved for a very long time. This is what the best forms of climate action are about – impactful but achievable things that create a positive experience and prompt more action. Your evaluations, figures provided and evidence you’ve shared with us throughout your application all point to a very successful year on your Eco-Schools journey, well done everyone! Your acrostic poem Eco-Code is punchy and powerful, full of direct calls to action. It’s a great reflection of the ethos that your Eco-Committee has created, well done to all involved! Thank you for your question suggestions for next year’s Environmental Review, they’re interesting and intelligent ideas that we will take into consideration when compiling next year’s review. And thanks for applying for an Eco-Schools Award – your submission was innovative, impactful and overall inspirational. Good luck! Thank you so much for submitting such a terrific application. We have loved reading about your journey and are incredibly impressed by all you have achieved. We have no hesitation in awarding you an Eco-Schools Green Flag with Distinction, congratulations!
As always THANK YOU very much for your hard work, we are so proud of all our schools and the collective achievements they have made to protect our planet for future generations. We look forward to working with Sydenham Primary School again next academic year to help you expand on your eco-actions and successes of this year.
The Eco-Schools Team