The Hub
Eco-Schools (Learning/Eco-teams)
Waltham Forest council recommends the Eco-Schools programme as a structure for setting up an Eco-Council and empowering eco-action in your school.
Eco-Schools is the largest educational programme on the planet, engaging millions of children across 67 countries. Implemented by Keep Britain Tidy in England, it encourages students to actively protect their environment and involves the whole school community through pupil-led projects.
Students select three out of ten topics to focus on each year which enables them to lead the way on actions such as reducing water and energy consumption, improving recycling and food growing in school grounds. This will lower the schools carbon footprint and increase biodiversity as well as benefiting learning outcomes and well-being.
The programme enables students to drive change and improve their environmental awareness by following a simple Seven Step framework in order to achieve an internationally-recognised Eco-Schools Green Flag accreditation.
Benefits include:
Children get the chance to plan and implement their own environmental actions and projects related to combating Climate Change.
Raising environmental awareness
Pupils are more confident, better behaved and developed their leadership skills
Improving school environment
Saving school money.
Once registered, schools have access to a whole host of age-appropriate, free resources including the new Count Your Carbon tool to make your school’s journey to Eco-Schools Green Flag as smooth and positive as possible.
Training
Eco-Schools runs online training sessions available to all registered schools. Visit the Eco-Schools training page for full information.
Cost
Registering and following the Eco-Schools seven steps is completely free. The Green Flag assessment in summer term costs £200.
Waltham Forest Council funded 20 schools to apply for their Green Flag between 2021 – 2024. Unfortunately this funding is not currently available. Eco-Committees are being innovative and raising money to put towards their Green Flag through pre-loved school uniform sales and eco-crafts market stalls at Christmas and Summer fayres.
For more information and to register visit : www.eco-schools.org.uk.
Watch the video on Eco-Schools.