Eco School
Green Flag Award
Lancaster Academy is officially an Eco School! We have been awarded an Eco-Schools Green Flag accreditation with a distinction! This wonderful achievement acknowledges and celebrates all the hard work of our student Eco-Team led by Mr. Phythian.
The Lancaster Eco-Team, with the support of the school, successfully re-developed a previously unused area on school grounds. They created a pond area which is now home to a plethora of wildlife, a peace garden for students to spend quiet reflective time should they need it and an outdoor classroom complete with seating for 32 students and a retro blackboard!
Becoming an eco-school has allowed us to do a lot more to show teachers, students and other parents how we can look after the local environment so that it helps us live a sustainable future. From planting trees to helping hedgehogs we are always trying to do something to help. - Student Lead Eco-Ambassador at Lancaster Academy
A lot of hard work has been put into the pond area by staff and students – clearing the area of debris and putting in the hard graft to plant, but now everyone is reaping the rewards. This wonderful green space has given pupils a chance to focus on green issues and learn about how to care and cultivate the environment around us.
Not only have we created some beautiful spaces but we’re helping to regenerate the air around us. The pond classroom area provides the perfect outdoor space to learn and we’re pleased to see pupils making the most of the peace garden for those quieter moments when they need them. - Mr. Pythian, Eco-Team Leader
To gain our Green Flag, we worked through the 7 Eco-Schools steps:
- Eco-Committee
- Environmental Review
- Action Plan
- Curriculum Links
- Informing and Involving
- Monitoring and Evaluation
- Eco-Code
The Eco-Code at Lancaster Academy
The Lancaster Academy Eco-Code fits within our READY values:
- Respect our environment by following the code of reduce, reuse, recycle
- Demonstrate our employability by working hard to make our school eco-friendly
- We are accountable for the health of the planet, we are accountable for the health of the school
- Just as our school is diverse, we will celebrate and protect the diversity of nature and each other
- We will be young ambassadors who communicate our eco-values to the rest of the school and local community
Projects
We are fortunate to work with Marc - a brilliant Sustainable Schools Education Officer who supports what we do at Lancaster Academy.
Lancaster Academy worked incredibly hard to be more sustainable in all that they do, gaining their Eco-Schools Green Flag Award for the first time in the 2022-23 academic year, and being one of only a handful in the city who achieved the prestigious Award with Distinction. In particular Lancaster Academy have improved biodiversity in their grounds, being one of the key schools involved in the Saving the Saffron Brook project, planting 400 trees last winter. For this reason, they won the Eco-Factor Award, which was voted for by students from other participating schools at the Leicester Eco-Schools Celebration Event. - Marc, Sustainable Schools Team at Leicester City Council
Day to day, the goals of our Eco-Team inside the school are focused on:
- reducing energy consumption
- continuing to help reduce the carbon footprint of our dinner hall
- examining our energy usage in each part of the building
- reminding teachers to turn the lights off with the help of an eco-monitor in every form class!
In partnership with Leicester City Council Sustainable Schools Team:
- Urban Nature Project - we are a Hedgehog Champion school
- Saving Saffron Brook - we planted 400 trees! Find out more in the video below:
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