Here in St. Matthew’s Primary School, we are proud to say that we are involved in the Eco-Schools Programme. Our staff and pupils care about many of the environmental issues we face today and we want to make positive changes and impact to our environment. Our Eco-Schools programme provides opportunities to promote sustainable living and foster an environmental awareness throughout the school.

In Saint Matthew’s we have formed an Eco-Council, made up of children, staff and parents. The Eco-Council meet monthly to target areas in our school which are not environmentally friendly. From this, we engage in a process of planning, acting and reviewing, to make positive changes to our environment. Throughout this process, we try hard to involve as many pupils, members of staff, parents, organisations and other members of our community.

The role of the Eco-Council

We aim to link our actions through opportunities in curriculum subjects. Our major topic this year has been to develop the Health and Well-being of our pupils and staff and our minor topics are to promote Outdoor learning and Biodiversity.After conducting an Environmental Review, it was decided to concentrate on the major topic of Health and Well-being and Biodiversity in our school community.  As part of these topics we have introduced several Well-being programmes such as ‘Paws B’  and ‘Creative Mindfulness’ .

Alongside these topics we encourage the school community to continue with our aims to ‘Reduce, Reuse and recycle’ and remain as energy efficient as possible. We also try to provide opportunities for the children become familiar and learn about current environmental issues.

We have been enthusiastically promoting Outdoor learning in our Foundation stage and Key one groups (each class aims to go outside at least once a week) alongside this Key stage 2 classes are encouraged to use the outdoor space and our new Outdoor Classroom more effectively for learning across the curriculum.

Alongside these topics we will continue to promote different ways of recycling within the school and reduce the amount of waste we send to landfill.  Our Eco Warriors will have a prominent role in the reduction of energy usage within our school on a daily basis.