Pupil-led eco-committees are a great way to help your school make a positive impact on the planet and set the foundations for pupils to lead eco-friendly lives
In order to be an eco-school, your school must be committed to putting young people in control of environmental actions in their school and community. There are many things you can do to support your pupils as they embark on this eco-adventure – here are some tried and tested ideas to think about.
Set up a pupil-led eco-committee
An eco-committee, led by pupils, should meet regularly – at least twice per term – to discuss and implement environmental actions for your school. It should be e organised to discuss environmental action for your school and wider community and be responsible for carrying out environmental reviews and for preparing an action plan which the whole school can engage with.
Help your eco-committee to carry out an environmental review
To successfully complete an environmental review, your eco-committee must review the processes of your eco-projects, and their potential environmental impact, to determine where they meet local and government environmental standards. To help your eco-committee write the environmental review, you and the children should:
Give a clear view of the range of the school’s impacts.
Make sure that no significant areas are overlooked.
Identify areas where little or no improvement is needed.
Help students and the rest of the school community understand the environmental impacts of the projects.
Help them to prioritise the actions to be taken.
Make an eco-action plan
The eco-action plan is based on the results of your environmental review and provides a series of goals and a structured time plan for your school to achieve your agreed environmental improvements. It will set out objectives and indicate the corresponding actions that will be undertaken throughout the project.
Link it to your curriculum
Linking the projects being implemented by your eco-committee to your school curriculum is a great way to inspire your pupils to engage with the environment. It can help them understand the importance of nature and teach them how to live eco-friendly lives. To do this, your school can include projects related to any of the following topics:
Biodiversity
Energy
Global citizenship
Healthy living
Littering
Marine
School grounds
Transport
Waste
Water
Engage the wider community
Your eco-committee might choose to involve members of the wider community in their eco-projects. These community members could include:
Pupil’s families
Local authorities
Utility providers
Local businesses
Charities
Neighbouring schools or nurseries
Local groups
Places of worship
To engage your wider community members, you can share a newsletter or e-newsletter, hold an assembly for your local community, share updates on your school website or post on social media sites such as Twitter, YouTube or Facebook.
Monitoring and evaluating your progress
Eco-committees should be monitoring the progress of their eco-projects from the early stages of each project. This will help to evaluate each project and identify areas of success and areas that need improvement.
Evidence of monitoring can be provided by doing one or more of the following:
Taking photographs
Producing graphs
Producing charts
Applying for charity awards schemes
Creating a survey
By evaluating each project, your eco-committee will be able to identify where they need to make improvements and then apply these to future projects.
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