Topic Awards 2024

The Eco-Schools Team was incredibly impressed by Coldfall Primary School’s commitment to increasing biodiversity within their school grounds and local community. The creation of a new, wildlife-supporting sensory garden involved all pupils at every stage, from design to getting hands-on and making their vision a reality. As part of the project, every class planted a tree, each year group sowed seeds, and different classes got involved in introducing scarecrows, bug hotels, bird baths, and even an accompanying wildflower meadow. It’s this collective approach that makes Coldfall Primary School a worthy winner of our Biodiversity Topic Award 2024!

Children at Cranberry Academy in Stoke-on-Trent took responsibility for reducing energy consumption not only in their school but across all 18 schools within their trust. They devised a simple yet effective red and green sticker system to indicate which devices should be left on or turned off when not in use. This system successfully raised awareness and changed behaviours both in and out of school. What particularly impressed our team was the fantastic video the pupils created to introduce the system across their trust. It was brilliantly produced with a well thought out spooky ‘vampire devices’ theme. Pupils are rightfully proud of their achievements, having significantly reduced energy use across their school and trust! 

Students at Lancaster Girls’ School chose to focus their Global Citizenship efforts on two critical issues: fast fashion and the global refugee crisis. Recognising the relevance of fast fashion to high school students, the Eco-Committee researched, prepared, and delivered an assembly on the industry’s negative impacts. Building on this, they organised a successful clothes swap event and collected preloved prom dresses for Year 13 leavers. During Refugee Week, the Eco-Committee planned a series of initiatives including inviting local refugees to their school to share their experiences. Through these initiatives, students gained a deeper understanding of global issues and the importance of community action, and they have now been recognised as a School of Sanctuary. 

Staff members at Beeches Park Day Nursery take immense pride in preparing delicious, healthy, and inclusive meals for the children. They ensure each child receives at least five portions of fruit and vegetables daily, cater to various dietary requirements, and cook everything from scratch without using salt. Their meals not only promote health but also celebrate diversity, educate, and reduce their nursery’s environmental impact. Children are introduced to ingredients, flavours, and traditions from different cultures, participate in growing and harvesting produce on-site, and benefit from the catering manager’s commitment to sourcing local and seasonal ingredients. Beeches Park’s dedication to health, diversity, education, and sustainability during mealtimes makes them a deserving recipient of our Healthy Living Topic Award.

Pupils at Meltham CE Primary School are dedicated to keeping their school grounds and local community litter-free. They launched their litter campaign with a school-wide competition to design anti-litter posters. Two winners were selected, one from KS1 and one from KS2. The Mayor of Meltham presented the winners with prizes and was so impressed by their entries that he had them made into giant banners now displayed on the library in the town centre, encouraging all visitors to keep Meltham tidy! Additionally, litter awareness has been integrated into various curriculum areas across all year groups, including a detailed analysis of community litter by Year 6 pupils. Furthermore, the school has continued to actively litter-pick in their grounds and local community, collecting more than 100 bags of litter during the academic year. 

Despite being some miles from the coast, the Eco-Council at Oakfield High School and College in Wigan decided to complete a huge, big beach beach clean-up at Fleetwood Beach as part of their Eco-Schools work. As an SEN school, they needed to carefully prepare to ensure the event was accessible to all, including learners who use wheelchairs. On the day, a countryside ranger met with learners to discuss threats to marine life before 63 students participated in the clean-up. The students at Oakfield showed remarkable determination and tenacity, choosing to tackle an issue important to them and ensuring no barriers prevented them from taking action. Their efforts earned them our Marine Topic Award! 

Ryecroft Academy in Leeds makes exceptional use of their school grounds to benefit pupils, wildlife, and their local community. The ways they utilise their grounds are too numerous to list fully, but here are a few highlights:

Three meadows have been developed to support pollinators and commemorate those people and animals lost in conflict. Their conservation garden features a ‘time for us’ area for families to have valuable one-on-one time with pupils, and a community area welcoming pre-school children and elderly residents. Each school house has its own allotment beds, where pupils grow produce matching their house colours. This teaches the concept of ‘eating the rainbow,’ and produce is donated to a local homeless charity. Flowers are grown to gift to local residents, and an orchard area has been developed. Pupils fundraised for a bicycle storage area, and creatively repurposed old lunch trays into trowels and crisp packets into benches. And this is just scratching the surface of their incredible efforts!

For several years, pupils at Bishop Wood Church of England Junior School have encouraged active and sustainable travel. Their unwavering commitment has resulted in over 90% of pupils consistently walking, cycling, scooting, or wheeling to school. And their success has even caught the attention of their local council, which sought advice from Bishop Wood’s pupils on promoting Walk to School Week across Hertfordshire schools. Their effective strategy includes annual initiatives like road safety training, the Big Walk and Wheel, and Bikers Breakfast, alongside new projects developed by their pupil travel ambassadors. Their latest initiative involves collaborating with the council to repaint the worn zebra crossing outside their school, ideally in rainbow colours to show support for the LGBTQ+ community. Although their initial application was declined by the local authority, their determination remains undented, and they have now reached out to their new, local MP for support. 

In September 2023, Downsend School in Leatherhead surveyed all staff members and students to gauge their attitudes towards sustainability and identify environmental issues that they considered most important to tackle. Their results highlighted waste as a key concern. Their Eco-Council linked up with their school’s maintenance department, leadership teams, teaching, and non-teaching staff and over the following terms delivered an impressive number of initiatives including: regularly weighing food waste/sharing this information, delivering form-time sessions about using recycling bins correctly, recycling hard-to-recycle items, wrapper free snacks, and a new reward system that recognised good practices such as using reusable containers. As a result, Downsend now sends 20% less waste to landfill and recycle 4% more! 

The Eco-Committee at Rickmansworth School, located in the aptly named Three Rivers District, tackled our Water topic from multiple angles. In collaboration with their art department, they launched a ‘Turn Off’ Competition to design reminder signs for lights, taps, and switches – winning entries are now displayed throughout their school. Additional water-butts have been installed meaning mains water was not used in their school grounds once during the academic year. The Eco-Committee also addressed plastic pollution – the real scourge of our oceans. While they continue to work towards their long-term goal of eliminating bottled water sales in their school, they made significant progress last year. They raised awareness about the issue, encouraged their peers to use reusable bottles, and even reached out to other schools to learn how they achieved this goal. 

Bright Horizons Didcot Day Nursery and Preschool

Bright Horizons Didcot has emerged as a leader in early years environmental education and action. In just a few years since joining the programme, they have transformed from not discussing eco-issues to presenting at the UK’s largest nursery manager event, sharing their experiences with the children’s minister and foreign secretary, and serving as a case study for other nurseries on their sustainability journey. Throughout their nursery, practitioners take pride in instilling environmental responsibility in our youngest generation and creating opportunities to engage both children and parents in environmental initiatives. These initiatives range from becoming a recycling hub for the local community to implementing book, toy, and clothing swaps, and supporting biodiversity through grounds improvements. Bright Horizons Didcot, you are a fantastic ambassador for the Eco-Schools programme, and we are delighted to recognize your efforts with one of our Eco-School of the Year awards! 

Burton Fields School

Having been an Eco-School for several years, Burton Fields have already made vast improvements to their setting – with a particular focus on providing outdoor learning spaces and opportunities to young people who may not have access to outdoor space at home. Their school had already introduced various features, including outdoor classrooms, ponds, wildlife areas, a bog garden, and a dedicated outdoor learning teacher. With the improvements already made to their school, and a packed school calendar, their Eco-Committee had a tough challenge thinking of further improvements. With this in mind, their Action Plan this year focused on expanding their Eco-Schools’ work beyond school boundaries. They loaned litter-picking equipment to families, turned Walk to School Week into Walk Week with at-home challenges for pupils to complete, engaged in community planting, and provided parents with advice on supporting biodiversity at home. Their commitment to sharing knowledge and expanding their impacts into their community makes Burton Fields School a deserving recipient of one of our Eco-Schools of the Year awards. 

Fullbrook School

We are thrilled to acknowledge Fullbrook School’s dedicated Eco-Club for their outstanding efforts in enhancing the school’s sustainability and integrating environmental awareness into curriculum learning over the past academic year. Their recent achievements include significant reductions in year-on-year energy and gas consumption, over 65% of students regularly engaging in active travel, frequent litter-picks, on-site energy generation, a successful uniform redistribution initiative, and a very popular gardening club. However, it was the Eco-Club students’ petitioning of staff members that truly embodied the student-led ethos of the Eco-Schools programme. They conducted a CPD meeting for over 80 staff members, where they taught the basics of climate change, shared their personal concerns, and urged staff to incorporate environmental issues into all curriculum areas. Their inspirational efforts brought climate change to the forefront of the school’s agenda, motivating every teacher to explore innovative ways to integrate these crucial topics into their teaching. Already, their hard work is making a noticeable impact, with increased environmental learning and awareness among students.

The Grammar School at Leeds

Once an unused and unnamed waste ground, Smeaton’s Wood was transformed by the Eco-Committee members from The Grammar School at Leeds, who, with the help of 400 schoolmates, planted 10,000 trees. This ambitious project has created a lasting legacy of their Eco-Schools work, storing carbon, supporting biodiversity, and inspiring others. However, this wasn’t their only noteworthy project. They also created a new allotment area (harvesting enough potatoes to supply their canteen for two days), delivered a successful anti-idling campaign, introduced measures to reduce paper usage, and installed solar panels along with other energy-saving technologies. Congratulations to The Grammar School at Leeds for their fantastic work! 

Great Oaks Small School

Despite having only 40 pupils, Great Oaks Small School have managed to achieve a great amount, by placing environmental issues at the heart of everything they do. With their environmentally-aware pupils at the centre of everything, their list of achievements from September 23 to July 24 is incredible. They managed woodland, grew gourds to turn into musical instruments, created a variety of habitats, nurtured native hedgerows, allowed bee-friendly wildflowers to grow, harvested a wide variety of fruits and vegetables, composted, propagated, fed and housed animals, litter-picked, and beach cleaned. Great Oaks Small School we were mightily impressed by your application – congratulations on becoming one of our Eco-Schools of the Year!