September 2022
We are very pleased to tell you that you that Chorley St Mary’s Catholic Primary School and Nursery have been awarded an Eco-Schools Green Flag. In order to be awarded this honour, Chorley St Mary’s Catholic Primary School and Nursery application was reviewed and the following items were noted:
It's wonderful that you have appointed such a large and representative Eco-Committee, this shows your school’s excellent commitment to both the programme and the eco-cause. We love your democratic and fair approach to appointing Eco-Committee members. It’s great to see that other pupils played a part in the process. We love that you kept minutes from your meetings and that they helped to track, guide and prompt your activity. It was great to see that young people were responsible for completing those meeting minutes – this helps them develop new skills! This is a mature and professional approach. Great work!
It was wonderful to see how completing your Environmental Review helped to raise the level of awareness in your school and helped your Eco-Committee to identify the issues and spot gaps in your school's existing environmental activity. But equally important is that it helped you to recognise the great work that you were already doing. This helps to keep up the good activity whilst making you feel empowered to do different things. We love this!
We love the range of activities that you and your Eco-Committee planned for delivery. The fact that they cover such a wide range of activities (energy monitors and a ’switch-off’ campaign, recycling points for pens & batteries, both energy and waste awareness posters, a ban on glitter and balloon releases, a Marine Life Day and making an artwork sculpture from waste) is excellent. It was also great to see accountability clearly marked in your Action Plan, although we were surprised there was no real Monitoring and Evaluation system in place. Great work though! You’ve clearly embedded the ethos of Eco-Schools far and wide in your school!
We love your ambition in tackling areas where you scored lowest in the Environmental Review. This shows you have a confident Eco-Committee dedicated to maximising their impacts. We’re really impressed at how you’ve linked environmental issues to a variety of curriculum areas. We loved seeing the excellent photos of your curriculum links and planners. This is a great example of layering in sustainability and climate change into your studies. We loved reading about how you had incorporated learning about global issues not only into the Geography and Science Curriculum (most common ones) in your school, but also into other areas such as English, Maths, History and D&T. Great work!
Your electronic Eco-Board is great, incredibly visual and engaging and promotes your work in a very attractive way. We love how active your Eco-Committee was in communicating their activities school-wide with both assembly and class feedback and use of the school website and social media as well as the Eco-board itself. These all combine to make a great approach!
We love that your pupils have taken their great work beyond the school gates and into their local community by planting some trees for the community as well as 250 trees (really?) for the Queen’s Green Canopy Jubilee Appeal – superb! We are certain that your pupils will have greatly benefitted from your involvement with such outside organisations as Chorley and Lancashire County Councils, the Woodland Trust, CAFOD and Connecting Classrooms. The parent quote is a great testament to the work that you are doing with your Eco-Committee, that they are taking their Eco-Schools work home with them and getting their families on board is something to be proud of! I hope you and your Eco-Committee take great pride in your achievements, when listed it's almost astonishing how many there are – however, the improvements to your school environment with the various energy and waste reducing and recycling initiatives and, most of all, your superb Jubilee tree planting (we loved that) all nicely stand out!
Everyone involved should be incredibly proud of the changes they have made. We thought your Eco-Code was brilliant! It was punchy and really creative, setting out tangible and accessible calls to action your whole school can get behind!
Congratulations to everyone for the great work you have managed to do, earning your Green Flag with Merit in style. You should all be very proud of your work and the application you have submitted!
On 14th March 2023, we held a flag raising ceremony where the whole school celebrated this great achievement. We had speeches, readings, poems, a flag design competition and would like to thank our guest, Councillor Steve Holgate, for attending.
Watch this space for the eco initiatives taking place and planned throughout this year led by our newly nominated school eco-council. Well done St Mary’s… keep up the inspirational work!