Guestling-Bradshaw CEP School
Guestling-Bradshaw CEP School - A Global and Sustainable School (link with Pestalozzi DEC)
Progress Report July 2009
The school was fortunate to secure a grant from Department for International Development (DFID) at the beginning of September 2008. The school had already placed Global and Sustainable development as a key area our three year strategic plan and the school improvement development plan for this year.
DFID's funding, through the Enabling Effective Support (EES) initiative, includes support to run the national Global Dimension website for teachers. This is a free online database of resources for teachers, including case studies of school projects, information on school speaker services, and continuing professional development opportunities. Guestling-Bradshaw has made good use of this on-line resource during the year and has promoted it as a site for children to learn from out of school too.
The EES initiative for the Global Dimension aims to put policy into practice by embedding global issues throughout the curriculum, as well as to build the capacity of the education sector at a local level to ensure global issues are taught in schools, furnishing teachers with the tools and skills they need to do this well.
The Vision
Following our audit of all stakeholders, the new Guestling School vision is now clearly displayed around the school on individualized posters. Visitors to our school have commented on these and the clear message that they communicate.
All staff make links and cross-curricular references to our vision, wherever possible, and it is embedded in our PHSE policy, including our Healthy School week and National Anti-bullying Week where we focus on:
• caring for ourselves through keeping safe, healthy and clean,
• caring for others with visits from community members who are available to help everybody such as drug-safety advisors, police officers, fire safety officers and the road safety team ( IMPS) and caring for others around the world ,
• caring for the environment through our recycling initiative, including composting and waste disposal.
Benchmarking
Since our last report, key issues that were highlighted in our sustainable school questionnaire have been actioned: carbon footprint awareness and increased understanding of the importance of recycling. The whole school audit undertaken by staff highlighted other areas that needed attention, which the school will now action as part of the next school improvement cycle.
These will include a focus on:
• Planning across the curriculum through regular assemblies and focus weeks. Find ways to include aspects such as Refugee Week, Black History Month, Fair trade fortnight through a whole school planning day, looking at calendar of events and map onto whole school diary.
• Use the Rafi-ki website to share and look at celebrations across other school and
establish links with schools around the world.
• Use materials from Cultural Diversity Training. Establish links with an urban, multicultural school in this country that contrasts with us as a white rural school.
• Use Learning Platform to develop virtual visitors from local community and beyond.
• Quizzes around the school set up so that the children regularly think about the wider world.
• Developing links with the local community
• Highlighting and providing information on newsletters and website to raise awareness of specific weeks
• Planning displays - Global School Board / classroom charters
• Providing up to date information on the school website about our progress and how DFID's funding has helped to facilitate it.
Curriculum development
A number of projects have enriched the children's understanding this year as the school strives to raise knowledge and understanding.
• Year 2 completed the ‘Through my Window' project looking at our school and the locality. Children drew plans of the school and the classroom and used the digital camera to take photos around our school. This was linked to the unit of work with the KS1 geography unit - ‘Around our School' (see photos). Examples of this work have been uploaded to www.kido-go.com to share our area with children in other countries.
• The whole school took part in a One World week culminating with a celebration day and our joint carnival with our link school in Hastings, Christchurch School. This was part of our project about Celebrations in our country and around the world. Students from Pestalozzi joined and shared their cultures with the children: story-telling and clapping rhymes from Tibet, jump-up dancing from Zimbabwe, learning a game called Kabadi, similar to cricket, from India and celebrating a day at the seaside in England were all part of the day and shared with parents, governors and community members including a steel band. ( See photos)
• ‘Guestling Goes Green week' involved the whole school. Holiday homework projects developed knowledge of reducing and recycling waste. A successful whole school ‘Go Green Day' with activities on the Rethink Rubbish bus from ESCC challenged the children to think about their actions and their impact on the world.
• The Chembakolli scheme of work was adapted and written to ensure that the children have a better understanding of life in Nepal as a whole as well as life in a village. A Pestalozzi student from Nepal assisted in the delivery of this unit.
• KS1 and Year 6 were visited by the Rother Recycling officer, Fergus Cameron who presented an interactive recycling activity. Clear messages resulted in posters encouraging recycling. Children armed with reminders left the school to educate friends and family.
• Go Green Week was the launch of the whole school recycling project. All classes now have a recycling bin and a general waste bin (soon to be accompanied by a compost caddy.) ALL staff across the school, including office and the school kitchen staff, now recycle as much as possible. A changed contract with SITA will be significantly reduce the cost of our refuge collection: recycling lift is £5 as opposed to £7.21 for general waste. This will also result in a large reduction in our carbon footprint.
Young Pioneers - Stay Safe, Go Green (Carbon Detectives)
Children in Year 6 worked with ‘Young Pioneers' to focus on staying safe with a focus on the transition to secondary school and anti-bullying techniques. Year 5 had a one day project focusing on Go Green and shared their learning on large display boards and presentations to all classes in the school and parents at our celebration assembly.
Carbon Detectives has been set up with support from Young Pioneers. The school council members have plans in place now to work through the 6 modules looking at our school carbon footprint and ways in which we can reduce this by 2010. We have completed the Waste and Recycling module where the children examined the weekly waste amounts and sorted it to find out how heavy the various waste categories weighed. This was the impetus to drive our school from NO recycling to now being a fully recycling school. Links have been made through literacy to writing persuasive letters to large companies such as Ribena about their packaging and recycled/ recyclable materials.
A grant has been applied for to set up the composting system to include ALL green and brown waste generated in school including fruit peelings, kitchen waste and shredded paper. The East Sussex County Council compost doctor visited us for a morning and advised us on where to site our 6 sealed composters and how to apply for a £500 grant in order to purchase:
Composters- (hot Johannas)
A wormery
A wheelbarrow
Compost caddies with lids for every class
Weld- mesh to place under 2 existing composters
Little Rotters tabards
In September 2009, the compost doctor will return to work with every class individually and to hold a whole school assembly to explain and embed the composting.
We are also aiming to secure a £500 grant from B and Q as we are within their radius, to purchase more gardening equipment. Along with the Morrisons gardening initiative we are gradually building up a good gardening store.
The vegetable garden has begun this year with support from community members.
It is hoped that this can be developed next year to become a more sustainable project growing food to cook in the school kitchens. There will be a gardening group to support the digging and planting of the garden across the year and a more planned approach to include crop rotation at the right times of year. It is hoped to link the gardening to certain topics such as ‘Dig for Victory' as part of our Y3 and Y4 Home Front topic, growing vegetables to harvest to make wartime soup.
The Foundation Stage children have also planted a successful garden and have enjoyed harvesting and cooking potatoes and other vegetables. They even share some homegrown strawberries!
It has been suggested by Connie Evans (chair of the local village council) that we could plant some trees in the reception outdoor learning space to provide shelter from the sun and to encourage a wildlife habitat.
The school council visited Hastings Town Hall in June to learn about planning sustainable communities. This followed a highly successful enterprise day run by Magnified Learning (Creative Partnerships) where children learnt about budget and environmental issues involved in planning. Interestingly, when asked to select the 10 most important amenities a community must have, ALL of the pupils present chose a recycling centre and a nature reserve as high priority.
As a school, we have tried to focus on presenting a positive image of majority world countries and a weekly ‘Where is this...?' power point competition ran during assemblies and lunchtimes, presenting a different view of countries than that which the children are regularly exposed to in the media.
Where next?
The school completed RISC's Global Schools Criteria for Self Evaluation and found this useful in highlighting where the school is at and what steps we need to take to become a Global school. As a result of carrying out the survey the school set aside an INSET day to plan and join up the work that we are already doing to raise global awareness and to look at other opportunities of bringing global issues into the curriculum. This year the school vision of caring and helping to sustain the Global World has been evident across the whole school environment and ethos. The school is proud of all that it has achieved this year in terms of global awareness and sustainability. Guestling-Bradshaw will continue to place this at the heart of all that it does so that children today will ensure that they contribute to a world fit for the children of tomorrow's world.
Kate Tugwell, July 2009
Read earlier report and background to this work >>
Guestling-Bradshaw CEP School website >> [opens in a new window]
