Arden awarded green flag status
Eco-Schools is an international award programme that guides schools on their sustainable journey, providing a framework to help embed these principles into the heart of school life. Arden had already achieved Bronze and then Silver awards but last year our Eco-Schools Committee put in an application for Green Flag status. In order for us to achieve this we knew that we would have to show an assessor around the school so they could see evidence of what we discussed in our application.
On Wednesday 9 October, we were informed that the assessor would be coming to Arden on that Friday. The Committee had a meeting to check we all knew what we had to do and were available to meet with the assessor to give her a tour of the school.
The tour involved a general look around the school site as well as talking to some specific teachers about how their subjects have been contributing to the works for the Eco-Schools Green Flag. To achieve Green Flag one of the things that would be looked at is where in the curriculum Eco Schools themes are taught. So we introduced the assessor to Miss O'Grady who talked about how the Geography club are helping with Switch-Off Fortnight as well as what students study in Geography lessons, for example Waste in Year 8. Mr Phillips also talked about AS Environmental Studies and other areas of the Science curriculum that linked with Eco-Schools and Mrs Bennett discussed the D&T curriculum and what we have done at Arden both in lessons and through the G&T themed challenges, eg the Food competition to cook a recipe using leftovers and/or local produce.
When the tour was completed the assessor spoke with students from the committee and also looked through our evidence file.
After the assessor left we then had to wait to hear if we had achieved the Green Flag or not. On Monday the committee went to the fortnightly meeting to be greeted with the news that we had achieved Green Flag. We were also very proud to find out that we had also managed to be the first Secondary School in Solihull to achieve this award. We hope to see our Green Flag flying very soon.
The assessor will return every two years so to help us stay on track the assessor sent us some feedback on how we could maintain and improve upon our Green Flag Status. Below is what they said:
"The Eco-Committee is very strong at Arden with a wide range of students who are all passionate about the work they do. Awareness of their work is paramount across the school and I am more than positive that they will continue to improve and grow stronger. The students were fantastic to talk to and it was great to see the amount of involvement from the teachers across the school. Well done and keep up the great work".
To discover more about Arden's Eco-School programme, please follow the link.
Committee members: Max Field, Balwant Rai, Jonathan Bolton, Jack Bailey, Alisha Sharma, Nicole Rose and Peter Fitzroy with Mrs Allton and Mr Murphy
