Eco School Status
Every school’s core purpose is to leave a wonderful legacy – a legacy in the form of the human beings that it sends out into the world and the legacy they in turn leave around them. Education shapes those lives, but in today’s world we have to reflect on where this legacy will be set.
The Dalai Lama explains that: “It is our collective and individual responsibility to preserve and tend to the world in which we all live.” We have seen in Greta Thunberg, and the on-going global climate change protests by students, that today’s young people recognise that they have a responsibility to protect the environment. The important role that school’s have played in shaping this mind-set cannot be under-estimated.
As a school we have been thrilled to shape our curriculum around this critical feature and the Eco School Status helps us to harness our students’ passion and imagination in improving the world around them. The Eco-Schools programme provides a rewarding and focused framework that empowers young people to make a difference in their school, local community and beyond. Indeed, since 1994, millions of young people around the world have worked through the Eco-Schools Seven Steps before being recognised for their efforts with a prestigious Eco-Schools Green Flag.
This accreditation supports too our Friary Ethic as we demand our school qualities of responsibility, independence, aspiration and resilience in our student so to meet the assessment criteria and more widely shape our world. We are passionate in our curriculum giving our students the opportunity to raise their voices, and make themselves heard, and this award is an integral part of this process. The Eco-School Status is heavily student-led, it is focused on an engaging and inspirational topic, and it shapes future citizenship where environmental-care is only going to get more and more important.
Of course, our curriculum lessons cover key eco-themes, but our Focus Weeks, our PHSE sessions, our student exhibitions, our field trips, and our bespoke projects all play their part. Our British identify may be shaped by different faiths and beliefs and individual liberty but the environmental concern is all about collective action and as a school our curriculum helps to harness this for the here and now and the years ahead too.
Our Eco-School curriculum focus is about shaping this future and leaving a legacy through our students that helps to save our environment and our planet.
To learn more about our Eco-School Status, please contact Sam Sullivan, Assistant Headteacher, via office@friaryschool.co.uk.
