Eco-friendly schools put forward for Community Pride awards

The Cook School and Grow Your Own Gardening initiative, run by pupils at Robert Wilkinson Primary School, in Strensall, was put forward for Best Primary School Project by teaching assistant, Jo Gears.

Each year group has been given a vegetable to grow and look after in the school’s garden, with the aim of exhibiting their produce in the village show in September.

The pupils have also been using the vegetables in Cook School sessions to learn more about healthy eating.

Sally and Hannah, two Year Six pupils, wrote to our judges to support the nomination.

They said: “Today we used these vegetables to create a dinner fit for perfection.

“We think that this was a brilliant idea because it prepares our cooking skills for later life and also it puts the idea of organic and freshly grown vegetables in our heads.

“Amazingly, everyone enjoyed the dinner despite the healthiness of it all. Overall, cook and garden school have been a great help in our education and we think it’s awesome. Our school is the best.”

Naburn Primary School is also in the running for Best Primary School Project – thanks to the work of the school’s eco-team.

Since September 2009, the eco-team has met every week to look at ways of making the school more environmentally-friendly.

Some of the topics they have looked are “purchasing and waste”, “food and drink”, “building and grounds” and “global dimension”.

Pupils were given a shock when they tipped out all the classroom bins on to the hall floor during assembly and sorted through the rubbish to discover they could have recycled 90 per cent of the waste they had thrown away.

Head teacher Nicola Stephenson Barr said: “This was repeated at the end of term and after purchasing bins for fruit waste for the playground, recycling bins for the classroom and compost bins, the rubbish that we put in the bins has been reduced dramatically.”

Other initiatives include an after-school gardening club that meets weekly on the school’s allotment and a project to redesign the school playground using sustainable materials and technology.

Mrs Stephenson Barr said: “Around school all the infant children have planted up tubs and hanging baskets. The plants of course are watered from rain water collected in the water butt and fed using fertiliser from our composting bins and also liquid fertiliser produced by the worms in our wormery.”

She said produce from the school allotment was shared between the children, and also sold at a monthly stall to raise money for the school and Brunswick Organic Nursery and Craft Workshop in Bishopthorpe, a workplace for adults with learning difficulties.