Eco -School Council and School Council

Eco School Members 24-25:    Head of Eco: Alex.  

Head of School Council:  Bridie   School Council members 24-25:     Hope, Aisling, Harvey, Lottie, Hannah, Daisy, Hattie, Brie, Oathie, Lydia, Leila-Joy

Our new school year meant a new year of democratically voting for new representatives on our Eco and School Council. This year they plan on raising money for charity; raising awareness of antibullying and diversity within school; and making the environment more biodiverse and eco friendly. Look out for the great work they do that will be highlighted below. 

 

Macmillan Cake Sale September 2024

We held our annual fundraising event for the great work that Macmillan Nurses do. This year it meant even more to our school community and the support we received was amazing. Our fabulous parents baked and donated lots of delicious treats, which we shared in classes and sold after school. School council served the school staff coffee, tea and cakes and the rest of the school enjoyed a yummy treat at break time. We raised £508!! Well done everyone!

 

 

CONGRATULATIONS TO ECO-COUNCIL 23-24

It's been a busy school year for Eco and they have been rewarded with three awards recently! First we achieved GOLD status as a Hog Friendly School for making the school more biodiverse and capturing evidence of hedgehogs in our footprint tunnels and wildlife areas. Thank you to those families who also sent us photos and videos of hogs in their own gardens. Secondly, we were invited to the new Mallory Building in Birkenhead for the first ever Modeshift active travel awards, where we were one of only two schools to receive the bronze level award! Thank you to all the families who have started actively travelling to school to keep minds and bodies more healthy as well as reducing parking issues and congestion around school and helping keep the air cleaner. Finally, we achieved our Green Eco- School Award again. This was in recognition of increasing biodiversity, improving school grounds and other work around  school to make us more environmentally friendly and increase children's knowledge of the impact they can have on the environment.

This picture below shows us receiving our Modeshift broze award for active travel.

Our feedback from our Eco Green flag was very positive and recognised the hard work of Eco-Council:

"Your school's greatest strength lies in its successful efforts to improve biodiversity and cultivate a passion for gardening among students, who actively participate in growing and caring for plants. Achieving the Gold level status from the Hedgehog Friendly Schools Campus, and implementing hedgehog-friendly measures, demonstrates your commitment to local wildlife conservation. Moreover, your active travel initiatives have earned your school the Modeshift Bronze level award. These programs encourage students and families to adopt sustainable transportation methods, such as walking and participating in Park and Stride schemes. Your school's dedication to promoting healthy living and environmental stewardship is evident in these accomplishments."

 

School Council

The aim of having a school council is to give our students a vehicle through which their voice can be heard and acted upon.  They meet at least twice per month to discuss school life  and to suggest any improvements or issues that they feel strongly about. They act as a liaison between their class and school leaders. This year they have already raised £675 for the Macmillan coffee morning, hosted an assembly during Anti-Bullying week and raised ober £350 for local children in hospital to have new pajamas for Christmas.

 

May 2024 Bling My Ride Day and Parking and Traffic Surveys

We held our second annual Bling My Ride Day when students were encouraged to 'bling' their scooters, bikes, shoes and rollerskates and actively travel to school. There were some amazing designs and children loved showing their rides in a parade around the playground. Thank you to Wirral Travel who provided two scooters as first prizes and goody backpacks as runner up prizes for each year group. Our Eco Council also went out to do a parking survey the week before and compare it to Bling My ride Day. They noticed that there was a lot less parking on this special day.  The week before they had noted some poor parking in the bus stop and on corners. However, they were pleased that most people kept to the speed limit (or close to it) outside school.

May 2024 Hedghog animation completed

We are excited to announce that the wirral schools hedgehog animation voiced by members of our eco council has been completed. It was a joint effort involving Wirral schools drawing hedgehogs and brainstorming a storyline, CTK students and Mrs Barker being recorded doing the voiceovers and Wirral Met students putting the animation together. We are so excited to be part of getting these important messages out to everyone. You can view it here:

https://www.facebook.com/CoolWirral/videos/814090173937590

May 2024 Hedgehog awareness assembly and home building

We joined forces with gardening club and Mrs Haigh and built two hog homes: one was made from wood and one from bricks (both recycled materials!) We also set up footprint tunnels to gain evidence of wildlife. You can see us painting the tunnel with charcoal, which doesn't harm wildlife but leaves footprints on paper. We left catfood in the tunnels as we know hedgehogs like cat food. We learnt in our hog assembly that hedgehogs are harmed by milk and bread so PLEASE DO NOT FEED HEDGEHOGS MILK AND BREAD!

If you find a hedgehog that needs help, call this number.

British Hedgehog Preservation Society on 01584890801, it's important that the hedgehog gets seen by a hedgehog rescue as soon as possible.

March 2024 Litter Picking in preparation for our Hedghog Friendly Campus

February 2024

Eco council will lead the school in becoming a Hedghog Friendly school. We have joined HogFriendly Schools and audited our grounds for Hog hazards. We identified litter, mowing, football nets and lack of water sources as possible hazards.

 

 

Please read on to see what they have done over the course of 22-23 and look at our 'Eco Code' which is a file at the bottom of the page.

JULY: BREAKING NEWS!

We are pleased to announce that we have been awarded our Eco Schools Green Flag with Merit! Congratulations to the team for their dedication and great ideas. We look forward to receiving our flag and certificate in September and continuing our hard work. Here are some snippets from our fantastic feedback:

It’s very impressive that you have formed such a large Eco-Committee. It shows that young people in your school are aware of environmental issues and committed to being active and creating positive change. This knowledge and attitude has provided your school with excellent foundations for the many successes that you’ve achieved this year. 

The pupil quotes provided are brilliant. They’re clearly passionate and impressive young people and we’re delighted that they have been given an opportunity to make a difference through the Eco-Schools programme, what a fantastic ambassador for your school and our programme. The video uploaded in the bonus section was incredibly inspiring, you must be extremely proud to work with such passionate young people. It's brilliant to read that the Environmental Review helped your pupils appreciate everything that your school is already doing to benefit our environment and identify areas to work on in the future. Your Eco-Committee didn’t let any tricky questions on the Environmental Review defeat them, instead they sought out other experts in their school such as kitchen staff and site manager to help answer questions which demonstrates their resilience and team ethos. Your Environmental Review is full of insightful comments and it’s clear that completing it helped develop ideas for future eco-activity. Your Action Plan shows that your Eco-Committee have carefully considered how they can involve their entire school in their planned Eco-Schools’ activities to achieve maximum impacts and raise awareness amongst their school community. It is fantastic to read that you have been able to choose topics based on the actions that matter the most to you and your local community such as travel issues like parking and congestion.

Your Curriculum Link examples are imaginative, practical and fun, making environmental education accessible and engaging, well done!  It’s clear that you have embedded environmental issues into your curriculum with great enthusiasm and these issues are being used to enrich learning in your school, whilst engaging young people in important issues.

You have placed a lot of emphasis on informing as many members of your school community as possible in your Eco-Schools work and this is a strength of your application. Getting involved with Wirral Road Safety as well as Blue Planet Aquarium are great examples of collaboration. Your ability and willingness to partnership is impressive! We’ll need this approach to fight the impacts of climate change in the future! It was amazing to see how your Eco-Committee maximised the impacts of their Eco-Schools work by reaching out to their wider school community via their newsletter and presentations.

It has been an absolute pleasure to read through your application, you are a wonderful ambassador for the Eco-Schools programme and we are delighted, without hesitation, to award you an Eco-Schools Green Flag with Merit – congratulations!

The Eco-Schools Team

July 2023

Time for another litter pick at school.

Eco Council organised and promoted 'Bling My Ride' and 'Choose your Shoes Tuesday' to encourage more people to walk, scoot and ride to school. This time, they could decorate their bikes and scooters for a parade around the school playground and wear their own shoes if they walked to school. The turnout was great and everyone had fun in the parade. There were so many different designs. Louise, Team Leader forSchools and Young People from Wirral, came to judge the winners and give 4 prizes. Our winners were Joseph Y1, Aluna FS2, Lacie Y5 and George Y5.  We particularly liked George's recycle design. The school council then chose a runner-up from each year group. Well done and thank you to all involved.

During this week, member of the Eco council who are also Junior Travel Ambassadors (JTA) did 2 traffice surveys, including speed checks using a speed detector borrowed from the council.  On the Bling My Ride day, they recorded considerably less parking and traffic outside school. However they did notice that higher speeds were recorded by passers by becuase there were less parked cars. They are now wondering what they can do to address this issue. We wonder if we may be able to get some signs from the council to raise awareness.

June 2023

Our Year 5 and 6 Eco Council members (Tara, Max, Kier, Henry and Jaxon) wrote a presentation for the Clean Air Conference held at Eureka Science Museum. This was a conference that involved many charities, Alder Hey hospital and about 8 local schools, who were all working to promote cleaner air. Our team explained what we had been doing to encourage active travel and educate both children and families about the air quality around school and the negative effect it could have on children, especially those with asthma. The team were OUTSTANDING! They presented a news report style presentation with confidence and had their audience engaged. Afterwards they got to meet the Mayor, film their answers for a further presentation to local authorities and participate in workshops. What an amazing day!

This was a busy month for us as we also met with Louise from Wirral Council who wanted to hear what we were doing to promote active travel and reduce parking issues. She was so impressed with us that she made us JuniorTravel Ambassadors and we all got badges and a booklet. We told her that we had raised our rate to 62% but wanted to get to 70% so she gave us some ideas and we voted on them. We have decided to have a Bling my Ride day and also to try using her speed monitors. 

 

May 2023

After learning all about air pollution and putting up our air quality monitors, we decided to educate the school about it. We held an assembly to explain what we had learnt about air quality and asthma and how pollution comes from cars by school. We told everyone about our Walk to School Challenge and also played a song to help children understand how to cross the road safely. To try to show everyone that walking to school in Bromborough was easy, we compared it to children from around the world who had to climb steep cliffs, walk barefoot, travel by boat and even on a pulley system over a river.

Our Eco Team organised a walk to school fortnight and each class recorded how they travelled to and from school for two weeks. If children managed to travel 4/10 journeys each week without the car, they achieved  a strider badge in recognition of their effort. Our data shows that we raised the active travel rate from below 50% to 62% but we still want a higher rate... so come on everyone!

 

April 2023

This month, Mr Young helped us install our air quality monitor tubes. They will collect samples of air from outside the school and we will send these off to be analysed. We are educating ourselves and the school community about the effect of pollution. We are holding a challenge to try to get more people to walk, scoot or cycle to school to help with parking issues, reduce pollution and improve our own health. Can you help us by actively travelling to school for 4 out of your 10 journeys per week? 

 

March 2023 

Members from Y4-6 did a traffic survey outside school as there had been concerns about parking and safety. They noted some unsafe parking and also that more people travelled to school by car than did walking/scooting/biking. The school council joined the Grove Street Cleaner Air Campaign and have been learning about the effect of vehicle emissions on health. They will be sharing their learning with the school community and hoping to raise the percentage of families who actively travel to school as well as helping to promote cleaner air around school.

February 2023

During our British Values week, school council held an assembly to remind everyone what the British Values were:Tolerance, Democracy, Mutual respect, Rule of Law and Individual Liberty.

We discussed how we have been exhibiting these in school through our voting, student voice groups, guest speakers of other faiths, anti bullying and celebrating uniqueness, following school rules and having visits from people who help us, like the police. We have focussed on being fair this week and listened to songs whilst exploring how fairness relates to each value.

January 2023

In January, one of the suggestions that school council brought to our meeting was that it would be nice to have some menu changes at lunch. They decided to get a top 3 from each class and ask the school kitchen if any of the changes were possible. Well done school council - now we have burgers, BBQ chicken and rice, fajitas and hot dogs on the menu! (Unfortunately sushi wasn't possible!)

 

November 2022

In November we celebrated Anti Bullying week (even though we believe in this all year round.) The school Council launched this year's theme "Reach Out" at a whole school assembly in which they reminded everyone what the definition of bullying was and the various forms it takes. They shared who we could talk to if we had any concerns and discussed how bullying made people feel. 

 

October 2022

In conjunction with Mini Vinnies, food donations were collected for Harvest. The council recognised the difficulties within our own school community that some families are facing so asked if the donated food could first be offered to our families. 

Each week, the council come with ideas their class have discussed. They are always thinking about great ways to help our school.

September 2022

The school council helped organise a coffee morning to raise funds for Macmillan.  Children bought cakes from their class and the school council ran the coffee morning for teachers and organised a game of pin the cherry on the cake. (Thank you to Tara for the fabulous game!) The whole school raised £460.01 to donate to a worthy cause. Thank you to Mrs Horgan, one of our parents and a local fundraiser for Macmillan for helping us too!

March 2022

This month we have talked about not wasting food. We had noticed in the lunchroom that some children had been wasting food so our school counil reps talked to their classes. Since then we have noticed a difference but we will continue to monitor.

We also went litter picking by the church. Look what we found that was spoiling God's creation!

February 2022

School Council asked member of their class what books they would like to add to the library. Here are some we ordered. After the sponsored read we will be able to buy more!

January 2022

Our new litter pickers have arrived. We have made a rota for each class to have a turn to help keep our school grounds tidy.

December 2021

Our new library furniture arrived and we excitedly helped organise the books onto the shelves. It looks great and we can't wait to get in and read! Thank you to everyone who has donated books they don't read any more and who also bought us some brand new books off our Amazon wishlist.

November  2021

We organised and presented a virtual presentation for antibullying week to remind everyone about the different kinds of bullying and what is and is not bullying. We also wore odd socks to show that we respect everyone's differences.

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