A message from Eco-Schools:
Congratulations On Passing Your Eco-Schools Green Flag!
We are very pleased to tell you that you and your Eco-Committee at West Didsbury C of E Primary School have been successful in meeting the requirements for the Eco-Schools Green Flag Award.
We reviewed your application and 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. It’s great to see that you had such a group of eager, enthusiastic volunteers. It was also wonderful to see that they were supported by a member of staff. 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!
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 (Big Battery Hunt, used uniform sales and collecting for a local food bank) and outdoor (regular litter-picks, ‘no-mow’ areas, growing herbs and vegetables, planting trees, building a bug hotel and bird boxes and composting food waste) activities is excellent. It was also great to see accountability and monitoring and evaluation clearly marked in your Action Plan. Great work!
Your Curriculum Link examples are imaginative, practical and fun, making environmental education accessible and engaging, well done! We loved seeing the excellent 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 PSHE. Great work! A challenge for next year might be expanding this to incorporate these issues into other areas of learning like English, Maths, Art or D&T!
Your Eco-Board is great. Your board is incredibly visual and engaging and promotes your work in a very attractive way. It’s also good to see your Eco-Committee members on the board. This is a great way to raise their esteem and make their schoolmates feel like they can approach them and get involved with your Eco-Schools work! We love how active your Eco-Committee was in communicating their activities school-wide with both assembly and class feedback and use of the school social media as well as the Eco-board itself. These all combine to make a great approach! We love that your pupils have taken their great work beyond the school gates and into their local area with a superb community litter-pick in a local park and being filmed as part of your local council’s climate awareness project with your local Environmental Youth Group. We are certain that your pupils will have greatly benefitted from your involvement with such outside organisations as Manchester City Council Neighbourhood Team, Duracell and Earth Day.
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. 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 your litter reducing and recycling schemes and, most of all, your wonderful biodiversity initiatives, supporting a food bank and ‘bee corridor’ (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!
A huge well done to all our Eco Committee! We couldn't be prouder of you!
