Pupils at Belmont Grosvenor are celebrating after winning a coveted Eco-Schools Green Flag for their drive to create a more environmentally-friendly community.
Children join a select band of pupils at schools up and down the country who have been awarded this prestigious honour – and the right to fly the Eco-Schools green flag from Belmont Grosvenor’s flagpole.
The Green Flag is an internationally recognised award for excellence in environmental action and learning – and aims to encourage schools, and the wider school community, to become more environmentally aware.
Pupils have to work towards a seven-point plan to achieve the award – steps range from having an active Eco-Committee in school and an school-wide Eco-action plan, to pupils monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of their work and agreeing an environmental code for the school.
Assessors spent a day at Belmont Grosvenor, meeting members of the Eco Committee, as well as staff and parents, before deciding to award the Green Flag.
More than 40 children at Belmont Grosvenor are involved in the Eco clubs at school, which run from Year 1 to Year 6. Their BGS eco activities range from litter picking and recycling, to organising beach clean-ups and building a greenhouse from old plastic bottles!
Green Flag assessors praised BGS pupils for “all the time and effort that has been invested in environmental education at school”, and recognised the “strong commitment” to the eco programme within school.
Special mentions were given to the school’s caretaking and catering team for their commitment to producing compost and leaf mould, as well as sourcing local foods and using produce from the school’s 20-acres of grounds.
Nicola Shillam, Eco co-ordinator at Belmont Grosvenor School, said:
We are delighted to receive the Eco Schools Green Flag award. As a school we feel that our impact on the environment is extremely important and we are dedicated to making a difference.
We have over 40 members in our Eco club and the children come up with the ideas of what we can do to help. We are currently making Eco bricks from our snack waste and have many more exciting projects to start next year.
The children should be immensely proud of themselves.
