What is Green Schools?

Green-Schools, known internationally as Eco-Schools, is an international environmental education programme, environmental management system and award scheme that promotes and acknowledges long-term, whole school action for the environment.

Eco-Schools is operated by the Foundation for Environmental Education (FEE) whose main partners include the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Biodiversity 2022/2023 Year One

We are currently in a 2 year cycle of activities to obtain our next Green School Flag: Biodiversity.
Our ultimate aim is to make students, parents and teachers aware of the importance of biodiversity in our world.
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The meaning of “biodiversity” is easy to understand when we break the word down “bio” refers to life and “living things” and “diversity” means range or variety. The word refers to the huge variety and variation of life that surrounds us on planet earth. Maintaining a high level of diversity among plants, animals and all living things around us is essential in keeping the environment healthy and fit for human life. This includes diversity within species, between species and diversity of ecosystems.

This year we are getting started with the seven steps of the programme
(Step 1) We have elected our hardworking Green schools committee.
(Step 2) We assessed our starting point by conducting and Environmental review. We did this by (1) carrying out Awareness surveys with staff, students and our school community and (2) we created a Habitat map of our school grounds. We then made displays to show our school community what we learned.

By measuring what our school community knows and what species and habitats are present on our campus we can now start to think up ways to raise awareness about biodiversity and to encourage species- richness in and around our school. We will come up with ideas and ideas and actions and write them down as an Action plan (Step 3). Our action plan will state what our targets are and how we are going to achieve them. It is important that we plan from the beginning how we will measure the success of our biodiversity plan

Monitoring and evaluating (Step 4) Improvements in our school will be done by repeating the Awareness surveys

Green Schools Committee 2022/2023

Our Green Schools Committee is a collection of students from 1st -6th class (Ellen Doherty, Esmée Dempsey, Eve Cosgrave, Kyla Coperthwaite, Anna Doherty, Rían Finnegan, Méabh Regan, Jessica Tuohy-Doherty and Chloe McGovern) and teachers (Mr. Mc Millian and Ms.Cross). The Committee works together to make our school a cleaner, greener and more environmentally friendly space for staff and students.

The students continue to work hard maintaining our four Green school flags; Litter and Waste, Water, Energy and Travel.

​Our reps practice, promote and monitor these initiatives within our school community to ensure we are as environmentally friendly as possible.