Children from seven Forest of Dean schools have attended a celebration event held at Forestry England’s Beechenhurst woodland to mark achieving Eco-Schools’ Green Flag status. The award is given for completing the Eco-Schools' seven-step programme, which raises awareness of environmental issues and helps children to make climate positive changes within their schools and local communities.   

Funding from Forest of Dean District Council enabled 12 local schools to take part in the programme, covering their £200 registration fee and giving a further £100 for each school to purchase resources to support a range of environmental projects. 

The celebration event was held last week by the council with the generous support of Forestry England and brought together some of the participating schools for a morning of fun in the woods. Children took part in activities, including wool weaving and making leaf masks, and each school received badges and an award for their eco-councils. Tesco kindly donated fruit for the event.  

Councillor Jackie Fraser, Cabinet Member for Environment at Forest of Dean District Council, said: “We are delighted that 12 local schools chose to take part in the programme, and all have either fully completed or are on track to complete all the criteria. It is important that young people understand the issues around climate change, biodiversity loss and the pollution of our planet and it is equally vital that they have the knowledge and feel empowered to act for the better rather than feeling helpless. 

“Eco-Schools is a well-established programme that covers a total of ten topics - waste, litter, marine, global citizenship, biodiversity, energy, healthy living, water, transport, and school grounds. Students form an eco-committee, learn about environmental issues, and are then encouraged to apply them to their own schools and local areas, putting forward suggestions to their teachers and classmates and leading on projects. These schools led some fantastic projects, including holding litter picking days, carrying out energy audits, making bug hotels and creating a wildlife garden.  

“All of the children and teachers here today should be proud of their hard work and achievements. This has been a fantastic partnership and one that we hope to be able to secure funding for again next year.” 

Lisa Golledge, a teacher at Severnbanks Primary School, Lydney said: “Severnbanks has been really fortunate to take part in Eco-Schools this year. It has given us the drive to set up our community garden and we have been working with key stage 1 pupils to plant seeds and nurture crops. The children have been really excited to see seeds grow into radishes, which they then harvested and ate in their classroom. We have also got key stage 2 pupils on a rota system, and they are helping to keep the garden growing. We are excited to see what will happen from here and how the garden will develop.” 

In addition to providing funding to the participating schools, Forest of Dean District Council also offered the support of its environmental officers to provide additional mentoring.  

Administered by the Keep Britain Tidy charity, Eco-Schools is flagged as the world’s largest schools' environmental programme.  

Schools must complete seven steps to apply for the Green Flag, which include creating an eco-committee that meets regularly, holding an environmental review of their school, drawing up an action plan, informing the wider school about the committee’s work and learnings, monitoring, and evaluating projects in the action plan and creating an eco-code. Schools must also link climate change to at least three areas of curriculum learning during the year.  

Information about the award can be found on Keep Britain Tidy’s Eco-Schools website - https://www.eco-schools.org.uk/