Tag: Primary

Richard Smith is the Eco-Schools lead at Inglehurst Junior School in Leicester. We spoke to him about his experiences of climate and sustainability education.

What is your role?

I run a specialist unit in the school for autistic children, I’m a designated safeguarding lead, and I’m also the lead for Eco-Schools here at Inglehurst Junior School. We’re an inner-city school with about 320 children from many different countries.

Why is sustainability important to you and your school?

I think it’s important to do things that are good for the environment. We need to change our habits to make the future better for the children.

Have you had any training around sustainability or climate education?

Yes. We’ve been doing Eco-Schools for quite some time. I did the Carbon Literacy training from the council, and the Less CO₂ programme delivered by Ashden.

What activities have you undertaken at your school?

On the energy side, we’ve got solar panels placed on the roof, and we’ve had the LED lighting changed. We are part of the Plastic Clever Schools programme. We’ve been doing the Litter Less campaign, and we took part in the Mealbarrow competition last year. We also have Severn Trent doing some assemblies about water at the moment.

Every year we have a Global Goals week where each class takes one of the UN’s sustainable development goals and runs with that for a week. So for example, one class might do rainforests, another might do marine life, and then we have an exhibition at the end where parents come and look around the stands.

We’ve also been part of the Tiny Forest programme. We have a field at the top of the road and we’ve turned part of it into an outdoor learning area. We’ve planted hundreds of trees and installed an area with seating.

How do you decide what projects to take part in?

The energy one is quite important because it’s saving the school money. At the moment we’re doing the school grounds, so when I feel it’s looking a bit scruffy I try to do something. I had four tonnes of bark delivered yesterday.

We always tend to do the Litter Less campaign because our field always needs a bit of a spring clean by March or April. 

What benefits have you seen for the students and the school?

Obviously there’s a monetary benefit from the solar panels, and we’ve also got a new boiler to make it more efficient. And I think it just puts a bit more pride into the school when the school grounds are looking nicer. We’ve also been part of the Healthy Schools project, so that’s given children a much greater awareness of healthy eating.

How do you decide what projects to take part in?

It’s a mixture of me and the students. We meet on a regular basis and sometimes the children come up with their own ideas. At the start of the year we do an environmental review and see what areas are slipping. So we might say, it’s not looking so good on how we look after our water. Then the premises officer will join us at the meeting and he might come up with different types of taps, or new water butts. So we’ll have a look at the topic and the children will come up with ideas and decide what’s feasible.

The children can be quite right. They’ll come up with a litter picking rota. And we’ll send a newsletter out and the children have said it’s a good idea to put top tips on there on how to save energy. 

What barriers have you faced and how do you overcome them?

The number one barrier is finance. Resources are expensive. Another one is not having the right grounds to have a proper forest school or an area where we can have a little fire. The way to overcome that is to train somebody up, but the cost of training that person would be a barrier.

It also needs people who are enthusiastic, and not just one person. You probably need to have a team of more than one or two or three people if you’re going to have a few projects going at the same time.

How do you find out about funding opportunities and projects? 

We get a newsletter from the local authority which contains project ideas. Quite often the headteacher will tell us about emails they’ve received or projects that different heads have been talking about.

How do you decide which projects to take part in? 

I decide if it’s of interest. For example, the Mealbarrow competition was good because I know the gardening club grows things that we could enter. The Litter Less campaign was quite an easy one because we’ve already got the equipment. 

I look at the jigsaw and see what pieces are going on in the school and then try and put them together so we’ve probably got a good half-a-dozen projects on the go. 

I don’t invest in things that I don’t think will be worth the effort. When it comes to something like battery recycling, we could do it for three months and end up with 15 batteries. It may be the case elsewhere that children turn up with 300 batteries, but in our kind of catchment area, we’ve tried in the past and it’s not been successful.

What makes a successful project?

The energy that people put into them. For example, with the Mealbarrow competition, the children really enjoyed it and we came in second place and won some vouchers. It looked really, really nice and the children got a lot of pride out of doing it.

So the successful ones are the ones that you invest a bit of time and energy in and there’s an end product that you can see. Another example is our garden area. Making it look nicer is a quick fix that’s both visually pleasing and creates a good resource for the children. 

Do you think your approach would be successful in all schools?

I don’t see why not. With Eco-Schools there’s a standard process that you go through and then you can customise it to your school. For example, there’s no point in us saying we’ll go and count the plastic on the beach because we’re nowhere near a beach. And it’s sometimes a little bit much, getting on your high horse and telling the children they should be eating fresh plums and pomegranates every day, when the bottom line is they can only afford a packet of crisps and a chocolate bar. You have to cater to your demographics.

But the basics of litter picking, reducing plastic, having nice environmental school grounds, collecting water from the water butts — these things don’t cost a lot of money and are almost generic. In the main, it’s just common sense. 

Queensmead Primary Academy is a primary school in a disadvantaged area of Leicester. We spoke to Principal Liz Latham and Premises Officer Simon Ingall about the importance they place on climate education in their school.

What are your roles in climate education at your school?

Liz: I’m the Principal, so ultimately the buck stops with me. I manage the resources and, along with the senior leadership team, make sure the children are listened to and facilitate what they want to do around climate change and sustainability.

Simon: I’m the site manager. My main responsibility is to try to make the school carbon-free as much as possible, which includes things like electricity, gas, LED lighting and solar panels.

I also work with the children on the Eco Group. We nominate a child from foundation right up to Year 6, and they are responsible for making sure that the rest of the children and teachers recycle correctly in classrooms. When the children have had training through the year groups, they become an Eco-Warrior in Year 6. This involves all sorts of activities including recycling, tree planting and litter picking.

What’s your school like?

Liz: In terms of the community that we are very proud to serve, we’re in the top 10% on the national social deprivation indices. We have a high number of children who live in very challenging circumstances, with around 40% on free school meals and many with parents who traditionally don’t tend to engage with school life. We see it as our moral duty to prepare the children as citizens of the future and give them the opportunity to formulate ideas about what society should look like.

Why is sustainability important to you and your school?

Liz: On a personal level, our generation has messed up the world and we’ve got to put it right. For the children, they have an awe and wonder of the natural world and they want to protect and preserve that. It’s our job to harness that and give them the tools they need to be proactive. And we often find that we can get to the parents through the children, because the children know how to make real practical changes that have a positive impact on their home life.

Have you had any training around sustainability or climate education?

Liz: Our local authority is phenomenal. They have a team of people who are really active and really engaged with getting into schools, sharing resources and offering training. Simon has been on lots of training through the local authority, but also through other agencies like Earthwatch Europe.

What activities have you undertaken at your school?

Liz: We got all sorts of things going through Polli:Gen. We had the Tiny Forest, which took no financial commitment as it was all charity-based. We were very proud to have the first Tiny Forest planted in Leicester, enabling our children to be citizen scientists. Our Forest School lead now uses it as a resource, so it’s giving the children that experience to be outside and increase their knowledge.

We also got a polytunnel through the Edible Playgrounds project. Again, there was no cost to the school, which is a significant issue because of our tight budget. We were given a grant by the David Cock Foundation to build a polytunnel and some planters so the children can grow food. It’s great for them to be able to feel the soil on their fingers and pull out a radish that they’ve grown themselves and eat it. It’s really important for children to see that cycle of growing.

How do you decide what projects to take part in?

Liz: Funding is a big one. If we’d have had to pay for the Tiny Forest ourselves, it wouldn’t be there. And the same with the Edible Playgrounds, because I haven’t got the money in the budget for that sort of thing

What benefits have you seen for the school?

Simon: It helps me cut down the cost of running the school. Recycling has reduced our waste bill from £11,000 to £4,500. The solar panels and LED lighting are going to save us money because our carbon footprint has gone down considerably. It means we can invest more money back into schoolbooks and things like that.

Liz: It can also make happier and more contented teachers, because they’re not tied to timetables as much. They can go outside and give space to sustainability, climate and the range of biodiversity projects that we have here.

It also helps build the children’s characters and aspirations. I am utterly convinced that the strong personal development in our school that runs across every year group is why our results are so high. We’re 20% above national levels for SATs, which for this area is utterly phenomenal. It gives the pupils a voice and makes them take pride in the school, and that translates to their own personal life. They’re invested emotionally in making a difference to their local environment, not just at school but in the local community as well.

What barriers have you faced and how do you overcome them?

Liz: The obvious barrier is financial. We apply for grant funding and look out for free opportunities. We always say yes to things because you never know where it’s going to lead.

Another barrier can be staffing. It can be difficult for teaching staff to let go in terms of driving forward academic considerations. The pupils go outside and have their Forest School experience but they also need to learn to read, so it’s finding a balance between academic achievement and character-building activities. But we have strong leadership and we’re all committed to developing the children to become the best they can possibly be.

What would it take to be successful at this in all schools?

Liz: The DfE have got to take more responsibility in pushing sustainability forward. It’s going to take a particular sort of senior leader to embrace that and run with it because timetables are very busy and accountability is high It’s got to be embedded, and it’s got to come through things like the science curriculum and the geography curriculum.

It’s tricky, but it has to be done. Because if we keep on doing the same things to our world, we all know what the consequences are going to be. Things have got to change, and it starts with the pupils because they’re the ones who are going to lead it.

Everybody can do something, whether it’s turning the lights off or making sure your recycling is on point.

Simon: Absolutely. For example, we recycle all our unused fruit and compost it, and use the compost in the edible playground. By the time they get to Year 6, the children are running it themselves and just get on with it. It’s all about giving them responsibility and getting them to make the right choices. They learn leadership skills, decision-making and resilience.

James Perry is the Eco-Schools lead at Buswells Lodge Primary School in Leicester. We spoke to him about his experiences of climate and sustainability education in an urban area.

I’m the special educational needs and disabilities co-ordinator (SENDCo) and I’m also the lead for Eco-Schools at Buswells Lodge. We’re a primary school in an economically deprived part of Leicester.

How do you approach sustainability and eco work at your school?

I’ve recently started targeting children who I feel would benefit the most, based on their social and emotional needs. I want to give them the opportunity to get out of the classroom and develop their confidence.

I think being a city school is a key thing for us. I was brought up in an area where you could access the countryside within a five-minute walk. When we take a lot of our children on a trip to the countryside, they are amazed by seeing green space and animals. It reminds you that as city children they don’t necessarily get the opportunities that I did, especially with the level of deprivation some of them have. In the past, teachers have taken children to Bradgate Park, which isn’t that far from us, and you realise lots of them have never done that before.

For me, one of the driving forces behind Eco-Schools is to get some of these children outdoors as much as possible. We may not have a farm, but we have a space where we can grow some vegetables, and a school field for the children to learn on.

I think it’s imperative that the children help to retain and make use of these spaces. After all, it’s going to be their world, and their children’s world, and their grandchildren’s world. If they don’t start making changes, there’s a good chance that it might not be the world that we have now, and the natural spaces that we have now might not be here for them.

Have you had any training around sustainability or climate education?

I have accessed the training through the Sustainable Schools team at Leicester City Council. The last training which I took part in was Carbon Literacy, which was particularly insightful. There’s always a variety of training on offer and we get termly updates on this.

What activities have you undertaken at your school?

We tie activities into our Eco-Schools action plan. We have taken part in the Sea Starts Here project about plastic waste and we’re currently involved in a World Wild Fund for Nature project where we’ve planted hedgerows. We were involved in the Litter-Less litter-picking and we acquired a grant from Severn Trent Water to build an outdoor classroom and refurbish our pond area. We’ve also had a large amount of trees from the Woodland Trust, which are now growing beautifully on our school field.

How do you decide what projects to take part in?

Initially, we complete the Eco-Schools Environmental Review on an annual basis. Some elements of the review are instilled as everyday practice now, such as battery and pen recycling and litter-picking. And then it’s been a case of looking at other elements that we could feasibly target each year, and trying to enlist as much external funding or support for the children as we can to complete these targets.

Has this extracurricular work on sustainability influenced how subjects are taught at your school?

Not as much as I would like. There are links — geography and science are easier for teachers to make links to. We have science lessons where the children go out mini-beast hunting and looking in the pond and through the hedges. We also complete fieldwork in geography using our outdoor spaces.

Our biggest challenge is ensuring that teachers feel more confident to use our outside spaces. For example, it’s a nice day, why not read to the children out on the field instead of in the classroom? I’ve organised CPD run by the Sustainable Schools team to support teachers in using the outside more, so hopefully that will give teachers more confidence.

It would be worth the government considering giving schools more of an incentive to have the environment linked to the curriculum, like they do with British values — then you could have it running through the whole curriculum as a golden thread.

What barriers have you faced?

One barrier for us is parental engagement. Getting parents to engage is difficult for us as a school, so getting them to engage with sustainability is equally tricky.

Time is another barrier, and that’s staff release time more than anything else. There are also financial barriers to some extent, but there are always pockets of funding which you can apply for.

Your school has an Ofsted grade of ‘requires improvement’. Has that changed anything in the way you deliver Eco-Schools?

Ofsted have always been extremely complimentary about the fact that we’ve had  Eco-Schools work as a high priority and we’ve held the Green Flag award for three years.

Ofsted always wanted to meet the School Council or Eco-Team and, again, were always very complimentary about what the children had achieved and how we as a school had targeted specific children almost as in intervention. So no, I don’t think that Ofsted has changed our delivery.

Where do you find funding opportunities and projects?

As a city, Leicester is lucky because our Sustainable Schools team are fantastic at updating us on funding and projects, usually through their monthly newsletter. They’ve also been supportive in making applications for funding and access to projects.

Once you make a start on the Eco-Schools process, you end up signing up to lots of  initiatives, and you get regular updates and emails about future projects.

What makes a successful project?

Ease of accessing and maintaining projects is a key one for us. Having somebody who will come in and help you set up that project is always extremely useful. For example, we recently had our Walk to School Champion come in to lead a refresher assembly to re-engage the children and staff.

Another factor is a project that’s not going to take up a huge amount of staff time. It’s fine for me to say I want to do this project for school, but then I’ve also got to think: am I going to be impacting on staff workload when they’re already busy enough?

What does it take to be successful at this in all schools?

You need to have someone who’s willing to really champion it and get stuck in and have a go. Ideally, it’s someone who is eco-conscious themselves and is willing to do the heavy lifting for the rest of the school, to make it easier for the rest of the staff to engage in the projects.

You need to set time aside too. You need time with the children, and that time is usually when you’re supposed to be teaching, so release time from class is essential. You can choose to work with them in your lunch and in after-school clubs, but for me that wasn’t sustainable, and there hasn’t always been enough time to do everything well.

I personally don’t think I’d have been able to run Eco-Schools as well as I have if it wasn’t for the opportunities that have been highlighted to me. People have said: we’ll support you to do this, and there’s this training, and that project, and this pot of funding that we’ll help you apply for. The support of the Sustainable Schools team in Leicester has been vital.

Naina Platt is the eco-lead at Charnwood Primary School in an urban area of Leicester. We spoke to her about how the council’s Eco-Schools network is helping her teach her children about the importance of sustainability.

What are the climate-related responsibilities of your role?

I oversee making our school eco-friendly by educating the children about sustainability and what that means to us — looking after the environment, how we can use our planet’s resources in a sustainable, manageable way, and what renewable resources we can use.

Can you give us some background on your school?

We are a happy, open, thriving primary school. We have approximately 440 students, who come primarily from an ethnic minority, with about 96% of Islamic faith. Others come from European and Caribbean backgrounds. A lot of our children come into school with English as an additional language, and a lot of our children receive the pupil premium to help them out. We’ve also got quite a few with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

What sort of space do you have?

We are extremely limited with our school environment. Indoors, space is a big issue for us. We have our classrooms, but for any additional space we are really limited.

We are also tight on space outdoors. It is a concrete jungle — lots of tarmac which we’re trying to green over, and maybe just small spaces. Parts of the building are also Grade 2 listed so we are limited to what we can do, and even in the playground we have a World War Two bunker under the tarmac which has restricted us from doing certain things in terms of digging, for example. But we do try.

Why is sustainability important to you and your school?

It’s such a big issue for human beings. And communicating it to the younger generation is really important. The children at our school may not be aware of what sustainability or carbon footprints are. It’s important for us as a school to empower our children and help them grow up to be adults who can look after their own environment and the planet.

Have you had any training around sustainability or climate education?

Through the Leicester Eco-Schools network I took part in carbon literacy training, which was invaluable — just making you aware what a carbon footprint is and what we can do to reduce it, and how to pass that information onto staff and the children.

Leicester City Council and their whole sustainability team do a wonderful job in keeping school eco-leads informed about things like the Great Big Green Week, Switch off Fortnight and the Plastic Clever Schools initiatives.

What activities have you undertaken, and what benefits have you seen?

We have a lovely green-fingered staff member who does a gardening club, which the children absolutely love. We maintain things in planters and grow things. That’s out of school hours. 

During school hours, we have noticed that children with behavioural issues like to dig, so during play time they will be planting or weeding. We’ve noticed a difference in their behaviour — they’re a lot calmer and happier.

The other thing we’ve been involved in is the Urban Wildlife project. Children from primarily across Key Stage 2 learned about biodiversity. A man from the council visited and encouraged the children to think about how to encourage wildlife in the school grounds. And it’s a hard thing to do, especially in our concrete jungle. But they absolutely loved it.

The project lasted a good five to six months and saw the children planting and growing. They were given a pot of money to spend on equipment. They were monitoring the wildlife in the school grounds and they absolutely loved it. They showcased it often in assemblies so the whole school took part in that.

We are also part of the National Educational Nature Park project. We’ve received funding to green our spaces, and we’ve made links with our local community gardens. It’s very urban here, but there are pockets where green spaces are growing and thriving. It’s really important for our children, especially those who don’t have that space at home, to be part of that and their local environment.

What barriers have you faced?

The biggest barrier is time — cramming it into a packed curriculum and making it meaningful, not just doing it as a one-off. It’s keeping it ticking along throughout the school year and making sure that, year after year, the children are growing up with these issues. We trickle sustainability into the curriculum, especially through geography, science and PSHE.

I’d love to see the children do more events and get out and about more, but costs, time and staffing are the biggest barriers for any school.

How do you overcome these barriers?

I think just going to school leaders and saying that I need time out. They are great and take that on board and give me the staffing and the resources, so that’s a great positive.

For an urban school like ours it’s about saying to staff: we’ve put in place these planters and green spaces, but you need to give this time with a group of children in order to maintain that during the school days.

I would say getting the parents and the wider community involved is important. For the Polli:Gen project, we invited the parents of the children involved in the project and we had a great morning out where they took part in discussion and took photographs. I would like to see more of that because it gets the message out to the wider community about what we’re doing.

How do you decide what projects to take part in?

The children are always at the centre of our decision-making. They are at the heart of our action plan. Through the school council and the eco-team they prioritise what we need, what comes first, second and third. The children tell us what’s important to them, and we take it to the leadership team.

How has the local authority supported you?

They have been great. Right from the start they helped me fill out my Eco-School application and got me onto my first Bronze award. The time they spent with me was amazing, and they continue to support me.

At the drop of an email I can speak to the sustainable schools team. They’ve come into school, looking at what we can do to monitor energy use, what software we can use to reduce our energy use, keeping us informed of funding and projects — it’s been really invaluable. We’ve also done projects with the council where we get together with children at local schools to share initiatives.

I’m just a busy school teacher trying to do my job, and I’m thankful for the links we’ve been given and the contacts that have come our way. The sustainability team at the council do a wonderful job.

Do you think your approach would work in other schools?

Yes. Any school, no matter how big or small, can do what we’re doing. We have shown that even with very limited space there are plenty of activities you can do to get the children engaged with their environment and thinking about sustainability.

Stephanie Holden is a Year 6 teacher and Eco-Schools lead at Lydgate Junior School in Sheffield. We talked to her about how she is introducing and embedding climate and sustainability education at her school.

Can you give some background on your school?

We’re a junior school, so year 3 upwards. We have about 480 pupils, 120 a year. I guess it’s a fairly affluent area, but we do have a very high number of EAL [English as an additional language] children as well.

We have two school yards and then we’ve got a Forest Schools area. And we do have quite a bit of green space dotted around, where we do gardening — we’ve planted apple trees and plum trees.

How did your interest in teaching more about climate change and sustainability begin?

We’re a Rights Respecting School [part of a UNICEF scheme]. Part of that is getting the children to be global citizens. When we started working towards gold accreditation I realised that we weren’t really doing enough about climate change and the environment. So I started the Eco Club.

Why do you see climate education as important?

I think it’s twofold, really. It’s personal, but it’s also the children. There are a lot of children that are interested in climate education, and I felt like we weren’t doing enough as a school, so that was my drive for doing more.

I’m not trained in any way in climate education: I am learning with the children. We’re trying to increase the children’s understanding but also our understanding as adults as well.

What kind of training would be useful to you?

I guess the science behind everything. Although on the surface I understand it, it’s putting all the pieces together. It’s not just physical resources, it’s about getting the people to lead us. After all, we’re not experts in environmental science, we are primary teachers.

Tell us about the Eco Club that you set up.

It’s been running for three years. We opened it up to any child in years 4, 5 and 6 and they became part of the committee. It’s an afterschool club as opposed to in the school day, so the idea is that they’re ambassadors for the school, but they’ve chosen to come along to the club.

We started by becoming an Eco-School, so we followed their seven-step plan and got that last year. The three main areas covered were biodiversity, waste and energy. The children have done assemblies to spread the word across the school.

On top of that, I introduced the new role of eco-lead to our school council. We meet every two to three weeks, and they bring up any eco issues as part of that.

Do you include Forest Schools in your curriculum?

Some year groups are receiving Forest School lessons by a trained Forest School person. Our year group currently isn’t at the moment, but we’ll take them in the woods and we do things related to the curriculum. We try to get in the woods as often as possible, but realistically it’s probably twice every half term.

How do you choose what climate and sustainability activities to do?

I think it’s about having more of an understanding of being a global citizen, and preparing them for the future. I enjoy seeing the children get excited about being outside. Last week at Eco Club the kids all wanted to come outside so we spent 45 minutes raking up leaves, and they had a great time doing it. Sometimes, you just have to go with the children and their interests.

Some of the children come in with ideas about what we could do in Eco Club. They’re at the stage where they’re really inquisitive and interested, and actually what’s great is that they’re also teaching us as adults.

We’ve had a focus on waste, we’ve run bring-and-buy sales at Christmas, and then we had a massive influx of apples and plums that we’d planted a couple of years ago and we sold those at the school gates. It’s about trying to spread the word amongst the adults through our actions.

Have you found any barriers that have stopped you from doing what you want in school?

The main thing is time and also communication, because it’s quite a big school. Sometimes, with everything else going on in the school, the eco side of things can get pushed to one side and other things take priority, like curriculums and Year 6 SATS.

Everyone sees it as important, but when you juggle so many things as a school it can be hard to make it a priority.

How can you overcome these barriers?

I think when you make it part of the curriculum then it becomes truly embedded in the school. For example, in year four they do the Amazon rainforest and they talk about deforestation. And in year five they do a whole project on water, and as part of that they learn how some people don’t have access to clean water and how that links to the environment.

As part of our Rights Respecting School, we always have a summer campaign, and we’ve done things like reducing traffic around the school, using less plastic, and raising money for endangered animals.

Making it part of what we do means it’s not an add-on. It’s the world’s largest lesson, because it’s embedding things in what we already do as a school.

How do you ensure that it is embedded across the school?

We work as a team and we share ideas, so it’s not down to one person. All staff are part of being a Rights Respecting School, so it’s their responsibility to make sure that children’s rights are being met — and they’ve got to understand what that means.

We’re taking it slowly because we don’t want our sustainability not to be sustainable. We’re not trying to introduce too many things at once. I think that slow progress is probably better than trying to do everything at once and then failing. I do think it’s a whole staff approach, particularly teaching staff.

Do you think the approaches that you’ve used in school would work in all schools?

I think a lot of things we do would work at any school, particularly if they’re a Rights Respecting School because they can link it very much to that ethos. In terms of things that we’ve done like selling second-hand stuff, any school could do that.

Why do you think your climate projects have been successful?

I think when everybody gets behind something, it’s successful. When we do campaigns as a whole school, we all push for it and it can be quite exciting — one of our campaigns on plastics ended up being in the local news.

In terms of gardening at school and things like biodiversity, you can see that the children just love it. And I think the fact that they love it makes it work. Seeing things grow, digging up potatoes, tomatoes and all those sorts of things — they just get a lot out of it themselves, and that’s lovely to see.