Nelson Academy has achieved the Eco Schools Green Flag with Distinction Award for the 3rd year in a row.
The award was graded how our school maintains sustainable practices, incorporates ecological aspects into the curriculum, and makes environmental improvements to our school and community. The program has schools choose three focus areas to concentrate their efforts. This award recognized our successes in making improvements to our school grounds, reducing energy, and establishing a healthy living environment at school. This school year will see us choose three new topics for this school year and will be sharing with those with you soon.
With the award we received, Eco Schools sent the following response:
We are very pleased to tell you that you and your Eco-Committee at Nelson Academy have been successful in meeting the requirements for the Eco-Schools Green Flag Award.
We reviewed your application and noted the following:
It’s fantastic that you have such a large Eco-Club in your school, it shows that your pupils clearly care about our planet and all plants, animals, and insects that live on it. Our team would recommend recruiting additional adult support for your Eco-Club (if possible). This will help share the workload whilst embedding and expanding your environmental initiatives even further. Thank you for uploading a photograph of your Eco-Club – what a brilliant bunch! Your Environmental Review is packed with comments, and this is exactly what our team enjoys seeing. It’s clear that completing it provided your Eco-Club with plenty of ideas for creating an impactful Action Plan. This process also allowed your Eco-Club to see the progress that can be made across the school site, alongside the impact of previous years actions. This is brilliant to read – well done to all involved. Your Action Plan contains a diverse range of activities aimed at creating positive behaviours, making an immediate difference to your local environment, and expanding your Eco-Schools’ initiatives into your local community. Your Action Plan is clearly aimed at involving as many people as possible, maximising the impacts of your Eco-Schools activities. Monitoring and Evaluation can be one of the more difficult steps of the Eco-Schools’ framework, your Eco-Club predicted this and proactively developed ways to monitor their projects from an early stage. Your curriculum link examples are impressively extensive and varied, showing your school’s integration of environmental issues across a variety of subjects and year groups. The examples provided in your application are brilliant, you have used environmental issues to add an engaging, real-life context to learning in your school. This approach will enrich pupil’s education whilst helping them understand the pressing issues our planet faces! Thank you so much for sharing examples of pupil’s work in your application such as your Year 3 butterfly projects, they really helped our team understand and appreciate the environmental learning occurring in your school. We really like how your Eco-Club used their school newsletter to involve the broader school community in their environmental initiatives, sharing their expertise and encouraging schoolmates and their families to live more sustainably. You have worked with a wide variety of individuals, organisations, and experts during your Eco-Schools’ journey. This can be difficult to organise but will have massively benefitted and enriched your Eco-Schools’ work. We loved reading about your collaboration with Energy Sparks; by working together we can ignite a movement towards positive change. Organising a whole-school environmental day is an example of best practice. It transforms environmental education into a celebratory, communal event that engages the entire school community, teaching collective responsibility in the process. Your Eco-Fest board is a wonderful and informative celebration of your work within the community! Taking the time to showcase your Eco-Club’s work demonstrates the value you place on it, giving them confidence and encouraging engagement from pupils beyond your Eco-Club. You state that the most significant success of your Eco-Schools’ work was your whole-school Earth Day Festival celebrations and wide variety of activities across the school and we agree that this is a phenomenal achievement! Thank you so much for applying for our School Grounds Topic Award. Your application will be carefully considered, and winners announced in the next academic year! Your biggest challenge was one familiar to many Eco-Coordinators and Eco-Clubs, finding time for your Eco-Schools’ work. Despite this obstacle you successfully adapted, resulting in numerous positive impacts throughout the year. Your Eco-Code is beautifully designed, with clear goals that relate to your achievements and future aspirations. It’s a great manifestation of your values and accomplishments at Nelson Academy! It has been an absolute pleasure reading through your fabulous application. You have truly inspired us! We congratulate you on achieving an Eco-Schools Green Flag with Distinction, and we can’t wait to read about what you get up to next year!