Eco-Schools

Thursday 14th April 2022

Green Flag 6

The Eco-schools committee is proud to announce that Penicuik High School has been awarded our 6th Green Flag.

Our 2019- 2020 Eco-schools journey started with ambition in the autumn of 2019. A large and enthusiastic Eco-schools committee was assembled and completed the environmental review, identified our sustainable development goals and completed the draft action plan. Aimee Gorrie and Calum Lloyd led the group in two assemblies to share the plans of the group with the rest of the school. The garden was cleared and plans for the Malawi trip got underway.

In response to the imminent closure of the school the Eco-committee were still looking for ways to help. Using rosemary from the garden they created “plague posies” (as had been done during the bubonic plague) and handed them out to teachers. Sadly the posies didn’t work and school was out for Lockdown 1. S1s were encouraged to take part in a “Wildlife Wonder Wander” during the prescribed hour of activity tasked with spotting wildlife and completing an online wildlife identification quiz. In school some of our “Hub” students, support assistants and teachers took on the maintenance of the school garden.

On our return to school Eco-schools activities commenced again with a review of the action plan and a scaling back of our ambitions. Due to Covid restrictions it became impossible for Eco-schools committee to meet so they communicated via a Whats App group. Our minds switched to healthy living as a priority and the Eco-schools Committee led by S6 Isla McKay set about encouraging their peers to wear masks. Mrs Redford made facemasks with the seniors from their junior school ties. Eco-schools leaders identified rooms without recycling bags. They then wrote to Ikea who kindly provided some. During the autumn term the Eco-schools committee discussed climate change with Tom Pringle (Dr Bunhead) in “Penicuik Conversations” for Penicuik Carbon trust. These are posted on You Tube.

Sadly our planned work for 2020 stopped with the second lockdown but garden maintenance was continued by Hub students. Over the last two years we’ve also carried out four Rag Bag collections that have raised £137 for the Eco-schools fund.

In the first term of 21-22 our new S6 Eco-schools team have already taken on the school recycling, relined the pond and cleared the garden for winter with the aid of pupils and staff from TLC and SfL. They have taken part in a schools COP26 event (representing Japan); made a Powerpoint to tell the rest of the school about COP26 and attended a COP26 event in Glasgow to represent the school.

Green flag 7 planning is about to start and we’ll be looking for new Eco-committee members.

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