Tag: Secondary

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‘It helps the students make a real difference. It’s good for their mental health.’

Kate White is a geography teacher who runs the Eco Club at Sir Jonathan North Girls’ College in Leicester. We spoke to her about her experiences of engaging secondary students in climate change.

What is your role?

I teach geography, and I’m also the lead teacher for student voice, which basically means I run the student council. About seven years ago I started the Eco Club, and we’ve had an Eco-Schools green flag for a couple of years now. 

Tell us about your school.

We’ve got roughly 1,200 students. It’s a non-selective all-girls secondary, aged 11 to 16. We’re the only multifaith girls’ school in Leicestershire.

Why is sustainability important to you?

It’s one of the biggest problems facing us at the moment, so it’s absolutely vital that the students know about it and also that they can be proactive. I think quite a lot of them are stressed about the state of the world, so it gives them an opportunity to actually do something practical. It helps them to develop leadership skills and teamwork skills, which is really positive. 

As a trust we are pushing Eco-Schools across all our schools and really focusing on the power of the students to make a difference.

Have you had any training around sustainability or climate education?

I attended the training by Energy Sparks, the Carbon Literacy one, and then obviously I’ve had all the Eco-Schools ones via the local authority. 

What activities have you undertaken at your school?

Our Eco Club meets once a week and over the last couple of years we have undertaken several projects. 

We’ve got a pond, and we’ve been replanting it and making it more nature-friendly. We’ve done lots of litter picks round school, but also in the local area. And last year we got some funding to plant an orchard. We have nine trees plus raised beds, and we also planted some trees on the field.

We’ve been planting bulbs and pollinator plants, that sort of thing. We’ve been making artwork out of plastic and dresses out of crisp packets. 

And this year, we’re doing a hedgehog project with WWF. We have a hedgehog house and hedgehog training and we’ve made hedgehog pledges. We went to a local community evening at the school next door to raise awareness with the local community. Our students had a stand and they spoke to people about their project.

We have a common curriculum across the trust schools, so we’ve helped to design that and we’ve contributed to it. We do climate change in Year 7 and Year 9 and it’s also in the geography GCSE, so we do cover it quite a lot, which I think is very important. 

How do you decide what projects to take part in?

I basically let the students choose what they want to focus on and then look for projects that work with that. So for example, this year the students wanted to do something about healthy living and food, and then I saw from the Eco-Schools newsletter that there was the mealbarrow competition for growing food in a wheelbarrow. We haven’t done that before, but because it fits with what they wanted to do, I’ve signed us up for that. 

Over the years we’ve done different projects. When we did the Keep Britain Tidy litter pick, they gave us loads of litter pickers. So now whenever they want to go and do a litter pick, we just go off and we’ve got all the kit to do it. And with the orchard, we got funding for that and it also gave us trowels, so we can carry on with the planting projects over time. 

What benefits have you seen?

It’s been really positive. It does really help to empower the students. It builds their confidence and teamwork. It gives them a chance for a bit of leadership.

They start off in Year 7 just wanting to make posters, and as they get older, they start leading the projects and coming up with their plans, doing assemblies and spreading the message. Even though we’re a little voluntary club, it’s probably the main one that everybody knows about at school, and it does give them so many different life skills. 

It helps them make a real difference, and they all talk about it in their college applications and how it helped them grow in confidence. They are definitely worried about the state of the world, so I think it does give them a chance to feel they are doing something, however small. I think it’s good for their mental health in that way. And it’s just nice to get outside as well. 

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

Time is always tricky. Whenever I’ve got meetings or a parents’ evening we can’t do the club. 

Sometimes it’s budget, but that’s when things like Leicester Eco-Schools are really good because they apply for grants and get funding for projects, and then you can sign up for those. I think if I wasn’t in Leicester, it might be trickier because that team is so good and they send newsletters all the time with different things that are going on. And then because I’ve done certain things, sometimes they get in touch and say, ‘Would you be interested in this project?’ 

For example, last year we did the Saving the Saffron Brook project, which was the money for the orchard and bug hunts and various ponds and things like that. But that fed into them getting back in touch, saying we’re now doing this hedgehog project, would you be interested in doing that? And then they said, the swift charity has got these bird boxes and bat boxes, would you be interested in that? So it all feeds into each other which is really good. 

The academy trust is really supportive too. They want to make it trust-wide. We had our first meeting last month for the Eco-School leads across the trust, and there’s only a couple of schools that don’t already have an Eco Club. The trust wants to get those up and running, and we’re having an eco rally day in June with lots of different activities that the students would complete. They want all the schools in the trust to get a green flag award, so they’re getting on board.

What makes a successful project?

In terms of student engagement, it’s topics that they’re passionate about, things that they enjoy. They like it when it’s practical and out of the classroom. They like it when we have outside experts coming in. It makes them feel valued. And if they see those people regularly, that’s good for them. They can get a nice relationship going. 

Do you think the approach you’ve taken would work in all schools?

Yes, as long as you’ve got a supportive school and as long as you’ve some people who can help you out with projects or some people that can point you in the right direction of projects. The Eco-Schools website has ideas of what you can do. So if you’re a bit stuck on a topic, you can click on there and it’s got lots of ideas. 

When I first started Eco Club, it was a bit ad hoc, we only met up once a half term and we just didn’t get anything done. Now, by coming in every week, we’re always chipping away at projects and it means that you get your regulars that keep coming. I really enjoy running it, and they’re such nice, enthusiastic students as well. They’re wonderful.

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‘School leaders can see a city-wide network working on sustainability, and they don’t want to be left behind.’

Laura Barke is an Education Officer (Eco-Schools) for Leicester City Council. We talked to her about how she works with schools to help them implement activities around sustainability.

What are the climate-related responsibilities of your role?

My main focus is going into schools across the city and supporting them with their Eco-Schools Green Flag applications. I work with designated members of staff, typically the school’s eco lead, to complete their application.

My team also runs workshops for students and discusses with staff what they want to do and how they want to make a difference. There are about 120 schools in the city, and we work with about 80 of them.

Are there any costs to schools?

Our support relating to the Eco-Schools Green Flag work is free for schools and we offer that support as part of our core offer for schools. However, there is anaccreditation fee for the Green Flag award. . And some of the other projects we run are externally funded, so they don’t have a cost for the schools. There are then additional parts that schools can pay for, like carbon literacy training for their staff.

Why is your work important?

As an ex-teacher, I know the sort of time constraints placed on teachers. A lot of the time staff are really interested in it, but trying to fit it into the timetable is more challenging.

A role like mine is really valuable for schools because they have somebody there to take away some of those pressures. I can support schools in whichever way they want. I can run sessions with the children without into much input from school staff, or equally I can go in and give  the staff a starting point, or talk through some of their ideas.

Senior leaders can see that we’ve got a real network of schools across Leicester and they can see that there’s lots of staff working on this, so they value it more and they don’t want to be one of the schools that is left behind. They can see that 60 schools in the city have got the Green Flag, and they don’t want to be one of the ones who don’t.

What projects and activities have the council undertaken to enhance climate change education?

We’ve been working with classes of children teaching them about carbon literacy. We’ve also done a lot of work recently on outdoor education in nature. We’ve worked with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) for a couple of years now, and in the most recent year we have been improving school grounds — planting hedgerows, adding or improving ponds, introducing nesting boxes and creating hedgehog-friendly spaces.

Alongside the physical work on school grounds, we run education sessions afterwards with the students, so they’re involved in things like the hedge-planting. Then we’re doing further follow-up sessions, getting them to understand why we’ve done it and how nature is important.

Tell us about your work with Eco-Schools.

We have an offer open to all schools. They can contact us and we will do whatever it is that they want to support them with their application.

We run training three times a year for school staff where we talk them through the process and provide ideas for what they can be doing to work on the project, and we also run projects throughout the year that specifically fit within some of the topics of Eco-Schools. This year we’re running a litter project, and we’ve also done the Grow Your Own Grub scheme.

What’s that?

Grow Your Own Grub has been going for multiple years now. It’s open to all schools across the city and the idea is to get schools growing their own food. This is run alongside the public health team. So this year we’ve got the ‘mealbarrow’ competition, where schools are tasked with growing at least five different fruits and vegetables in a wheelbarrow. Then they must plan and design a three-course menu using the items they’ve grown. At the end we bring all of the wheelbarrows together from across the city in a celebration event where members of the public can come and see the work.

It’s suitable for any school, because even if they are one of the more urban or concrete type schools they’re going to have enough space to put a wheelbarrow in.

Schools usually have to pay for the Green Flag award. Does the council offer any financial support towards this?

We do look to subsidise the Green Flag application. Normally it’s £200 for a school to pay, which may be off-putting to many schools because it’s quite a significant cost. It’s entirely worth it, but trying to get that through could be challenging for some schools.

As a council, we look for different sponsorship opportunities and use support from

our social value programme. So last year, schools had to pay £50 for their

application rather than the full £200.

How do you choose what projects to undertake?

I think it’s a combination of reasons. A lot of it is to do with the funding that’s available. But we also look to put on projects that fit within the Green Flag work in particular, helping schools with that overall aim.

It’s also slightly based on the skills within our team — we’re more experienced with outdoor learning, so that drives some of the project proposals like the work with WWF. And often the work fits with different priorities in the wider council, from biodiversity to the climate emergency action plan.

What benefits have you seen from these projects for pupils, staff and parents?

When we work with students, 90% of the time they really enjoy it. Having someone new come in is exciting and increases engagement. For staff, it gives them the opportunity to do work they want to do but may struggle based on the different pressures of timetables and teaching time.

We often get really positive feedback from schools after a project to say that students have enjoyed it or the schools have seen really positive outcomes.

What barriers have you faced?

Definitely timetabling is a huge barrier. Often our contacts are really keen to get us in, but getting that designated time signed off by senior leaders can be challenging. Having space in the school can also be challenging. We are very flexible and happy to work in any space, but a lot of the time schools don’t have anywhere at all.

How have you overcome these barriers?

By sharing the value of the projects and making it really clear to the schools what they’re getting out of it and why it’s so important. That can be shared at different levels in the school, so everyone is on board and everyone knows this is something that they need to make accommodations for.

We also remind schools it’s free. And as a team, we make sure that we’re flexible, working with the school to fit around their timetables and the spaces that they have.

How do you ensure activities continue once your projects end?

Ultimately we rely on schools to take it on and maintain it, but it depends on the staff that are there. As a team, we’re pushing for follow-up funding and future-proofing. For example, we try to make sure that schools have multiple members of staff trained so if somebody leaves there are still people there to take over.

But I think one of the biggest things is having buy-in from senior leaders. This has a trickle-down effect, and they can then make sure that there’s multiple members of staff working on it throughout the school. If senior leaders are on board from the beginning, they can see the benefits to the work that we’ve done.

Do you think your approach would work elsewhere?

I think it’s definitely replicable across authorities, if you have buy-in from relevant people to make sure that your team is supported to build those connections with schools. It’s not the sort of thing that can just happen in a year — it’s an ongoing process.

The climate change and sustainability strategy is still optional. Is that a problem?

It depends on the viewpoint of the school. Some schools will use that as an excuse to not be involved. But equally, some staff understand the value of having a written strategy on climate change.

For me it would definitely make our work easier if it was mandatory because we could go to the 40 schools in Leicester that we’ve not got strong connections with. Ultimately our goal is to work with all schools in the city. But I don’t think it would be fair to make it mandatory without offering suitable support to schools.

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‘You have to dedicate time to sustainability. Decide what you want to achieve and stick to it.’

Kevin Elliott is the business manager for Meadowhead School in Sheffield. We talked to him about how he’s implementing sustainability into the school structure.

Can you give us some background on your school?

We’re a secondary school with a sixth form college, based in south Sheffield. It’s a mixed urban area, with half of the feeders from wealthy areas and half from probably some of the most deprived areas in the UK. We have over 1,900 students, 36% of which are pupil premium.

We’re also a PFI [Private Finance Initiative] school, so we ultimately hire the school’s facilities — we’re not responsible for them, which affects a lot of things that come with a sustainability plan, especially around grounds maintenance.

What climate-related responsibilities do you have?

I’m tasked by the governing body to monitor sustainability and to try and implement it into the school structure.

We wrote a sustainability policy for the school, and then we developed an action plan, and the action plan is run by an eco-group. The eco-group is run as an after-school club by two teachers from geography. They developed the action plan with the students and the students now work through it to see what we can do to become more sustainable. My role is to oversee that.

How did you develop your sustainability policy?

I was asked by the governors to develop a sustainability policy. I’d been to a South Yorkshire business leaders meeting, and they had someone there who was talking about sustainability in schools, and I took back a lot of what he was saying. We also bought a book about sustainability in the school place, and that helped us develop the policy and the action plan.

Why is sustainability important to your school?

I think sustainability is just becoming more and more prevalent in the daily life of everybody, and we thought we should get on board now rather than later.

I know a lot of secondary schools are not getting on board with it. I often go to sustainability meetings and there are no secondary schools there, they’re all primary. I don’t know if it’s because the children are older and they don’t want to be digging or messing in gardens. But we’ve got a group of eco kids that want to improve the area and want to improve society. All we can do is do the best we can for the school.

Have you had any sustainability training?

I’ve never had any training. It’s just been from attending events like the ones run by the local universities. And I’ve been in touch with local eco groups like Wild Sheffield.

What are some of the activities you have undertaken at your school?

We’ve built a forest school, and we’ve put in a huge outdoor classroom. We are growing our own vegetables, and we want some bees up there. The kids are asking for chickens too. They want an urban farm.

Our action plan covers lots of different areas. The eco group presents ideas to us and I take them to the governing body. We’ve got biodiversity, so the team has recently made a load of bird feeders in ADT woodwork. They’re now talking about building a pond.

We’re looking at getting better lighting with automatic turn-off, and we have energy-saving weeks where we have campaigns to encourage students to think about turning computers off.

We use the outdoor classroom and fundraising to support the local community. We work with the catering company around Fairtrade products and reducing food waste. We’ve done litter picks and we encourage everybody to learn about what bins to use. We’re rewilding the school grounds, for example with nature hotels.

For staff, we encourage the cycle to work scheme, and we’re reducing paper by banning printing things out for meetings. And we managed to get grants to install four charging points in the car park, which has encouraged a number of staff to get electric cars.

I’m really proud of what we’ve achieved in such a short timescale.

What benefits have you seen from these projects?

The charging points have been really useful because I’ve seen people charge their cars and that does provide us with an income. The litter picking obviously makes a difference. You can see it when it’s done.

We’ve seen big benefits from the forest area we’ve developed. We’ve just started running Forest School again for some of our SEND students who are really struggling. The outdoor classroom is a great help to them.

What barriers have you faced?

The PFI is a barrier because we can’t always do what we want to do. For anything to do with the grounds, we can’t just go and implement changes. We have to work with the PFI provider Kier, and there’s a lot of planning that has to go into it. For example, we just built some new steps to the outdoor classroom and it’s taken us a good six months to get them agreed.

One thing we’ve been working on for a couple of years is the traffic outside of school and trying to get some zebra crossings to slow the traffic down and remove some of the traffic. We’ve been working with the council for about two years now and hopefully a new traffic reduction scheme will be installed this summer.

How do you overcome these barriers?

Working with people. We work with Kier, we work with the council, we work with all parties to try and get the best outcomes for the students, for the school and the community.

I’ve also been working with a couple of primary schools in Sheffield. One of the barriers is that there’s hardly any secondary schools doing it. I’d love to link up with a secondary school that’s doing similar things, to share best practices and ideas really.

What projects have worked best?

The forest schools worked really well because of the people that have been involved. We were lucky to get some professional training on outdoor learning. And the teaching assistants were keen to be involved in it and they’ve now taken it on as their project.

The electric charging units have worked well because I’ve got staff that were travelling quite a long way in an electric car and panicking about getting home. But now they don’t need to worry because they can charge the cars while they’re teaching.

From a staff wellbeing point of view, I bought a proper coffee machine for the staff room, and now we’re using the leftover coffee grinds in compost for our vegetable growing and some of the kids are making candles from them too.

Do you think your approach would work in other schools?

I think it would. You’ve got to have somebody that will give some time to it, to attend meetings, create an eco-group, come up with an action plan. In the very busy environment that the schools are, sometimes it just doesn’t get thought about, but I don’t see why you couldn’t replicate it in most schools, because it is becoming more and more prevalent. But you have to dedicate time to it.

You have to pick and choose what you want to achieve, and then when you’ve achieved that, pick another thing and try and achieve that — rather than trying to spin all these plates and achieving nothing. I think that’s been our biggest learning.

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Carbon Literacy

Carbon Literacy is an awareness of the carbon dioxide costs and impacts of everyday activities, and the ability and motivation to reduce emissions, on an individual, community and organisational basis.

The course is the equivalent of one days learning and is best delivered face to face, but can be done over half days or one full day.

At Sheffield Hallam we are using a teacher and governor course, and student course to help individuals to understand their carbon footprint and take action on climate change in an education setting context.

For more information or find out when the course will be launched for teachers and governors please see below

To find out what staff and students think about the course please take a look at these YouTube videos.

For more information please email Lee Jowett, L.Jowett@shu.ac.uk