Eco Schools
About KS2 Eco Council
The Government in England wants every school to be a sustainable school.
At Manor Road we are proud to have achieved our Silver Award from Eco Schools.
The children have elected 8 of their peers as representatives for the Eco Council and these children, along with members of staff, governors and parents form our Action Team.
The Eco-Schools framework supports schools to work on nine different environmental and sustainable topics:
1. Transport
2. Waste
3. Water
4. Litter
5. School Grounds
6. Healthy Living
7. Energy
8. Biodiversity
9. Global Perspective
The Eco Councillors put a lot of work into keeping the school grounds looking good, while providing different habitats for wildlife. In the past, we have built minibeast hotels and hedgehog houses, made planters, cleared the pond area, planted soft fruit and made wild flower beds for the insects.
We were very grateful to receive donations of bulbs, fruit trees and hedgerow whips, which we have planted around the school grounds.
We have also worked with the local council to plant native primroses around the local area.
For a number of years, we have taken part in “What’s Under Your Feet”, which is a national science project with the British Trust for Ornithology, helping to uncover the impact of climate change on birds across the U.K. This involves counting, measuring and recording numbers of worms on the school field.
Now that we have a greenhouse where we can plant seeds, we can continue to develop the tyre allotment area so that the school can grow more vegetables to use in school or to sell at the summer fair. Donations from our Eco non-uniform day have helped us to purchase gardening equipment and compost for the whole school to use in gardening activities. We would also like to rebuild the bug hotels.
Our other focus area is plastic waste and littering. We aim to build awareness of the problem of single use plastic.
For further information about the Eco-Schools programme, visit their websites on www.eco-schools.org.uk and www.jointhepod.org