Eco Schools

Eco-Schools is a global programme engaging 19.5 million children across 67 countries, making it the largest educational programme on the planet.

For over 25 years, Eco-Schools has been empowering children to drive change and improve their environmental awareness through the simple Seven-Step framework in order to achieve the international Eco-Schools Green Flag.

Eco-Schools develops pupils’ skills, raises environmental awareness, improves the school environment and creates financial savings for schools as well as a whole host of other benefits.

Pheasey Park Farm Primary School and Early Years Centre achieved the Eco Schools Green Flag in 2017. Since then, we have successfully renewed our Green Flag three times, as renewal of the award used to be compulsory every two years but is now annually.

The most recent Green Flag renewal was successful in July 2022 receiving the following detailed feedback:

We are very pleased to tell you that you and your Eco-Committee at Pheasey Park Farm Primary School have been awarded an Eco-Schools Green Flag.

We reviewed your application and noted the following:

It's wonderful that you have appointed such a large and representative Eco-Committee, this shows your school’s excellent commitment to both the programme and the eco-cause. We love your democratic and fair approach to appointing Eco-Committee members. It’s great to see that other pupils played a part in the process. We love that you kept minutes from your meetings and that they helped to track, guide and prompt your activity, and thank you for including the excellent example. It was great to see that young people were responsible for completing those meeting minutes – this helps them develop new skills! This is a mature and professional approach. Great work!

It was wonderful to see how completing your Environmental Review helped to raise the level of awareness in your school and helped your Eco-Committee to identify the issues and spot gaps in your school's existing environmental activity. But equally important is that it helped you to recognise the great work that you were already doing. This helps to keep up the good activity whilst making you feel empowered to do different things. We love this! We love the range of activities that you and your Eco-Committee planned for delivery. The fact that they cover both indoor (hosting a Waste Week, textile recycling collections and a school litter/recycling awareness campaign) and outdoor (regular litter picks, building planters outside every classroom, creating a wildflower meadow and joining ‘What’s Under Your Feet?) activities is excellent. It was also great to see accountability and monitoring and evaluation clearly marked in your Action Plan. Great work! You’ve clearly embedded the ethos of the Eco-Schools programme far and wide in your school!

We’re really impressed at how you’ve linked environmental issues to a variety of curriculum areas. We loved seeing the excellent examples of pupil’s work and activities and the photos of them enjoying their allotment visit and Barr Beacon nature reserve survey. This is a great example of layering in sustainability and climate change into your studies. We loved reading about how you had incorporated learning about global issues not only into the Geography and Science Curriculum (most common ones) in your school, but also into other areas such as PSHE. Great work! A challenge for next year might be expanding this to incorporate these issues into other areas of learning like English, Maths, Art or D&T!

Your Eco-Board is great. Your board is incredibly visual and engaging and promotes your work in a very attractive way. It’s also good to see your Eco-Committee members on the board. This is a great way to raise their esteem and make their schoolmates feel like they can approach them and get involved with your Eco-Schools work! We love how active your Eco Committee was in communicating their activities school-wide with both assembly and class feedback and use of the school Sharepoint system, newsletter, website and social media as well as the Eco-board itself. These all combine to make a great approach! We love that your pupils have taken their great work beyond the school gates and into their local community with your memorable Experience: Sow, Plant & Grow visit to the Pheasey allotments.

We are sure that your pupils will have greatly benefitted from your involvement with such outside organisations as Curry’s, Clean & Green, the RSPB, The Leaf Programme and Birmingham City University. The parent quote is a great testament to the work that you are doing with your Eco

 Committee, that they are taking their Eco-Schools work home with them and getting their families on board is something to be proud of! I hope you and your Eco-Committee take great pride in your achievements, when listed it's almost astonishing how many there are – however, the real improvements to your school environment with the litter reducing, recycling awareness and biodiversity initiatives all nicely stand out!

Everyone involved should be incredibly proud of the changes they have made. We thought your Eco-Code was brilliant! It was punchy and really creative, setting out tangible and accessible calls to action your whole school can get behind!

Congratulations to everyone for the great work you have managed to do, earning your Green Flag with style. You should all be very proud of your work and the application you have submitted!

To find out more information about the Eco Schools programme, you can visit their website here. 

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