The Unicorn School Gains Eco-Schools Accreditation

Published on isbi School News dated Monday 6th of June 2011

The Unicorn School in Abingdon has been accredited with Eco-Schools' Bronze award.

The Eco-Schools programme is the largest sustainable schools' programme in the world with Keep Britain Tidy running Eco-Schools in England. The programme supports schools to work on 9 environmental and sustainable topics:-transport, waste, water, litter, school grounds, healthy living, energy, biodiversity and global perspective.

Having initially registered online, the first job Mike Pickett, the teacher at the Unicorn over-seeing the project, had to do was to form an 'Eco-Schools action team'; this comprised teachers and pupils from the school who wanted to help make a difference.

The action team's first job was then to conduct an environmental review and to develop an action plan. Once this was complete they began working towards their Bronze award by focusing on the actions of one of the topics, choosing 'global perspective'.

Mike says 'We decided to focus on a school in Tanzania who were in desperate need of some assistance. This allowed all our pupils to understand a little about children and their schooling in poor and under-developed areas of the world. We are in the process of raising money to support different projects there and this was a great way to look at the 'global perspective' topic for our bronze award.'

More information can be found at www.eco-schools.org.uk; in the meantime the Unicorn Action Team are making plans to win their silver award, the next step on the way to an ultimate 'Green Flag'!