We are very pleased to tell you that you that Winterbourne Junior Girls’ School have been awarded an Eco-Schools Green Flag. In order to be awarded this honour, Winterbourne Junior Girls Schools’ application was reviewed and the following items were noted:
“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. 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 such a wide variety of healthy outdoor activities (improving your growing area and bug hotel, planting flowers for pollinators, undertaking your allotment ‘Green Project’, teaching pupils about sowing, planting and growing and then using the produce in the kitchens) is excellent. It was also great to see accountability and a monitoring scheme clearly marked in your Action Plan, although we were surprised there was no Evaluation system in place. Great work though!
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 lesson materials, pupil’s work and photos of activities. 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 Science Curriculum (most common one) in your school, but also into other areas such as PSHE and D&T. Great work! 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 Action Plan, Eco-Code and photos of activities on the board. This is a great way to get the pupils involved with your Eco-Schools work!
We love how active your Eco-Committee was in communicating their activities school-wide with regular class feedback (by PowerPoint, nice example added – excellent) and use of the school website and social media as well as the Eco-board itself. These all combine to make a great approach! We are certain that your pupils will have greatly benefitted from your involvement with such outside organisations as Schoolfoodmatters.org and PIG (Pamper, Indulge, Give), both of whom we understand assisted with the improvements to your allotment growing area. 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 improvements to your school environment and your excellent allotment ‘Green Project’ nicely stand out! Everyone involved should be incredibly proud of the changes they have made. Your Eco-Code is really smart and concise. It’s a great message and its punchy nature will definitely help it be processed by everyone passing by your Eco-Board.
Congratulations to everyone for the great work you have managed to do, earning your Green Flag with Merit in style. You should all be very proud of your work and the application you have submitted!”
