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How we did it
Becoming an eco-school
Groundbreaking environmental initiatives have won Turners Hill CE School numerous awards, including TES Sustainable School of the Year in 2009 and a 2010 Total Green School Award. Elyssa Campbell-Barr met NUT members Julie Brown, Fran Few and Lisa Thomas to find out how and why the school has gone so green.
Turners Hill CE School in West Sussex looks like a traditional Victorian village primary. Except, that is, for the 24 solar photovoltaic panels and two wind turbines on the roof. Behind the school are the compost bins, wormery, hen houses, bugs’ hotel, sensory garden, vegetable beds and fruit trees. Alongside is a woodland of native saplings.
Julie Brown, Year 4/5 teacher, explains that the woodland is the school’s latest green initiative. The young trees will be coppiced to provide woodchips for a biomass boiler, which will eventually provide the school with all its heating and hot water, helping it to become carbon neutral. The land is loaned by the Paddockhurst Estate, and pupils have called it Hunt’s Wood after a teaching assistant who died in 2008.
Classes at Turners Hill are named after trees, and each has different environmental responsibilities. The reception and Year 1 children in Maple class buy and grow vegetable seeds, helped by the ‘site managers’ from Year 5/6 Willow class. The youngest children are also ‘Wombles’, keeping the grounds litter-free. Year 1/2 pupils in Cherry class look after the bugs’ hotel and sensory garden, while the Year 2/3 Birch class has charge of composting and the wormery.
In Julie’s Holly class, Year 4/5 pupils look after the chickens and care for the new chicks every spring. The eggs are used in the school kitchen, and each autumn the vegetables grown are made into soup to be shared at harvest time.
Holly class have also been watching a pair of birds build their nest and raise their young, thanks to a bird box with a camera broadcasting to the classroom, installed by staff from Wakehurst Place, a nearby National Trust property.
As well as keeping watch on the insects in the bugs’ hotel, Fran Few’s Cherry class have been growing beans and carrots in an old tyre, measuring and monitoring their progress. “You can access lots of the curriculum through this work,” Fran explains, “from maths and science to art and literature. The children enjoy having so much responsibility and become very engaged.”
Julie agrees. “It definitely motivates some children who find academic work difficult. Sometimes pupils simply need to get outside and dig, using their energy to do something useful. And the cross-curricular nature of the work engages children who are reluctant to just sit and do writing or maths.”
The biggest challenge, say both, is finding time for all the green activities. “You need to stick up for what you believe in and have confidence that you’re addressing the curriculum through working outside,” says Fran.
Julie concedes that support from the community is vital too. A neighbour helps teach the children about chicken rearing and looks after the birds during the holidays. Helen, a teaching assistant, has responsibility for the school garden, while Tom, a governor, takes the lead on applying for grants.
“The grants help enormously,” says Willow class teacher Lisa Thomas, explaining that the school is currently seeking funding to install a rainwater harvesting system. The Total Green School Award, won this summer by Year 5/6 pupils’ Great Big Energy Saving Challenge project, won the school £500. Grants from the Big Lottery Fund contributed to the wind turbines and solar panels and the new coppice.
Lisa is also responsible for ensuring Turners Hill maintains its Green Flag Eco School status. Every two years she reports on the school’s progress and projects, with her most recent report highlighting the light and window monitors in each class, movement-sensitive lights and aerated taps in the toilets, new double glazing and insulation in the pre-school, and the successful ‘walking bus’ and ‘park and stride’ schemes.
The Green Flag award also demands an action plan, and this is developed by the school’s eco- committee – pupil representatives from each class above reception who meet fortnightly to discuss ways of furthering the school’s environmental work.
So what advice do the teachers have for other schools interested in following their green lead? “Start small,” says Julie. “We began just with a link to a neighbouring farm.“
“You need an enthusiastic head and supportive senior management team,” adds Fran. “You need to make sure that all new staff are on board, and it also helps to have a few dedicated individuals like Tom and Helen involved.”
Read more about Turners Hill CE School’s green initiatives at www.
turnershill.w-sussex.sch.uk – click on ‘Eco-friendly’HOW WE DID IT
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