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29 September 2022
St Mary’s has achieved a distinction in the prestigious Eco-Schools Green Flag Award – recognising ongoing commitment to raising awareness of environmental issues.
Operated globally by the Foundation for Environmental Education (FEE), and in the UK by the Keep Britain Tidy campaign, the Eco-Schools Green Flag Award is an international accreditation scheme that has been highlighting and rewarding young people’s environmental actions for more than 25 years.
The Eco-Schools Green Flag award celebrates the efforts of St Mary’s dedicated Eco Committee, which is overseen by St Mary’s Sustainability Coordinator, Mrs Whiting. The group is run and staffed by a passionate party of students, who are each committed to making sustainable, environmentally friendly decisions to benefit the school community. The award follows a year of hard work by the Eco Committee and Mrs Whiting, and an assessment of the school’s current level of sustainability across its classrooms, kitchen, infrastructure, governance, utilities and community.
To achieve the Green Flag Award, St Mary’s Eco Committee was required to complete a seven-sep process in a single academic year. The Committee opted to work on three core areas: marine, waste and school grounds (selected from a range of ten themes provided by the Eco-Schools scheme), and this choice was based on a school-wide environmental review, conducted to identify opportunities for action.
In addition, to achieve a distinction, St Mary’s was required to complete an additional seven steps for both the Bonus Educational questions and the Bonus Environmental Impact scheme. This involved evaluating how effectively sustainability themes are embedded across the St Mary’s Senior School curriculum, with examples including work done in English, Art, Textiles, Geography, Food Tech, and Science. It also saw students undertaking outreach work, for example, they delivered an eco-focused lesson to Year 2 students at the Junior School.
“Congratulations to our Eco Committee, who work tirelessly to raise awareness of important local, national, and global environmental issues within our school community and beyond. They should be incredibly proud of this achievement. The Eco-Schools Green Flag acknowledges, rewards, and celebrates the ecological achievements of pupil-led teams. I know the Committee will continue to build on this success – implementing new initiatives and championing changes that will help to make St Mary’s a more sustainable place to learn – now and in the future.” Mrs Whiting, Sustainability Coordinator
Eco-Schools describes itself as the largest educational programme worldwide. Implemented in 70 countries, the scheme involves 56,000 schools, engaging 1.4 million teachers and 19.4 million students.
More on sustainability: https://www.stmaryscambridge.co.uk/about/sustainability-at-st-mary-s.htm
