Due to the rise in energy prices, children in Kingsham Primary’s Green Gang were keen to work on the Eco-Schools Energy topic, so voted to include it in their Action Plan. Their idea was to save money by involving their whole school in turning off electrical equipment. Posters and signs were created to use around the school to remind the whole community to do their bit! The children actively reminded each other to turn equipment off and appointed monitors in class to help pupils and staff remember. The Green Gang even created an energy checklist for teachers and other staff members reminding them what needed to be switched off at the end of the day. Next year, the Green Gang has already decided they’d like to focus on energy again in their Action Plan and have already signed up to the Switch Off Fortnight campaign!

Due to the current economic and environmental challenges, the Eco-Committee at St Peter and Paul RC Primary school decided that reducing their energy usage was extremely important. Their Environmental Review, completed with their Site Manager, highlighted that their school had already begun changing their standard lights for more eco-efficient LED panels, and that the outside facing part of the school was soon to be double-glazed.

Their next problem was how to engage their school as a whole in reducing usage further (in addition to the changes that were already happening). After various discussions and fact-finding missions, the solution that the Eco-Committee came up with was an ‘Eco Class of the Week’ award. Each class was given a chart to record the switching off of lights, smart technology and any other electrical equipment at break times, lunch times and at the end of the day. Each week, the winning class was displayed on the Eco-Board and presented with a trophy in Celebration Assembly.

During the winter months, each class had an additional responsibility to close doors, when safe to do so, as this helps to keep heat in classrooms, instead of losing to the corridors. This meant that the thermostats in each room could be turned down, helping reduce their school’s energy usage even further.

In order to help reduce energy use in their school, the Eco-Committee at Gorringe Park decided to label all the electrical devices around the school using a traffic light system:

Red meant the devices needed to always be left on

Amber that the devices could be switched off (but only by an adult)

Green for devices that could be switched off by adult or child

Placing these stickers throughout the whole school meant Gorringe Park could save energy and raise awareness of energy use, great!

As part of their Energy Saving Two Week project, the Eco-Committee at Saint James’s decided to appoint a light monitor for each class. Initially the class Eco-Committee member took this role, so whenever the children were leaving the classroom they would stand at the back of the line and turn off the lights. As the months went by, other children wanted to take on this role, so each week the class teacher would choose another child to do the job. In the end, each child was involved in turning lights off and saving energy. Switch Off  stickers were also put next to the light switches, so that whoever leaves the classroom last now remembers to turn off the lights.

The Eco-Committee at Tanbridge House School chose to work on Energy as a topic because they had noticed that the computers across their school site were still on when most of the students had gone home. This was most obvious in the winter term when there was a blue glow coming from all the computer rooms after dark. The Eco-Committee invited their school’s computer technicians to a committee meeting and asked if there was any way to automatically turn off their school’s computers. They were informed that the computers had a tameable automatic switch which was currently set to turn every computer off at 10pm. They decided this switch would be better utilised at 6pm, when pupils attending after school clubs and interventions had gone home. The computer technicians actioned this immediately.

The Eco-Committee then decided to tell their school community how much energy that simple action was saving and created a poster to further highlight their message, this poster is displayed in every IT classroom/computer area around their school.

Now, even though students do not always turn computers off the Eco-Committee feel satisfied that 4 hours of electricity have been saved for each of the 400 student computers in their school, resulting in financial savings of more than £100 a day! Now the Eco-Committee have asked their IT technicians to also look into whether they can install automatic shut off switches for the interactive whiteboard projectors, which will save even more electricity when teachers mistakenly leave them switched on after work.