“How can we live the eco dream?”. That’s the question teacher Margaret Lynch-Deakin asked herself constantly. As eco-leader at Heald Place Primary School in Manchester, she knew she was up against a tough challenge, despite the school’s engagement with the issue.
“We wanted to offer our pupils amazing opportunities to explore - and take action on - the environment and sustainability,” she says. “But the reality is that we have limited funds and the challenge of fitting it into the curriculum.”
Undeterred, Lynch-Deakin, under the stewardship of headteacher Hatim Kapacee, has ploughed on to bring her green dreams to life for the 700-odd pupils at Heald Place, an inner-city school serving a rich and diverse community just two miles from the centre of Manchester.
“Lots of pupils don’t have access to back gardens, so developing environmental education was an important priority for us,” she says. “We want to turn dreams into reality and build a legacy for the future. It’s about preparing our young people for life.”
And from developing a strategy in the early days to winning the accolade of WWF’s Green Ambassadors school of the year in 2015, Heald Place has tackled an extraordinary breadth of activities. From litter to compost, recycling, water meters, growing fruit and vegetables, encouraging wildlife and promoting healthy living, the school community has embraced sustainability and environmental issues.
Embracing environmental challenges
Lynch-Deakin is keen to stress that it’s an ongoing process, acknowledging that it’s a juggling act involving resources, time and money to get things moving, projects underway and changes made. “You can’t expect overnight success,” she says, laughing. Challenges to projects should be embraced - and expected.
“You need to learn, review and make judgements on both successes and failures,” she says, remembering the challenges the school faced when trying to reduce the number of parents driving their children in the morning.
“We had real problems with this. We did surveys, assemblies, letters home, consultations with parents. We looked at road restrictions and speed cameras - and had visits from highway wardens and the police,” Lynch-Deakin says. “Essentially, it’s about working together as a team,” she stresses, adding that things are improving.
She’s also keen on turning challenges into opportunities. “Historically, we’ve had vandalism on the school grounds - bins and benches burned, trees and plants ripped out, fly-tipping,” she says. Instead of giving up and accepting it, the key to stopping this anti-social behaviour was parental and community support. Lynch-Deakin and her colleagues got the council, police and refuse company Biffa on board. “Most of all, we just kept going. We fought for more green space.”
Now, there’s a growing alley, a new woodland area, an orchard and willow tunnels, plus a new polytunnel. “Our outside space is crucial,” she says. “It gets the children outside, enjoying the freedom of being active. It helps them to grow in confidence - and gives them opportunities to be creative, solve problems and make friends.”
Sustainability in the curriculum
Using environmental and sustainable education to shake up the curriculum is also close to Lynch-Deakin’s heart. “There’s always something which can add to [students’] general learning, and it should be an integral part of that, not just a bolt-on,” she says. Heald Place has linked its eco work into topic work in all areas including science, geography, numeracy and personal, social, health and citizenship education.
None of the work at the school could have happened without a huge degree of involvement from pupils, teachers and staff, parents and the community. Lynch-Deakin claims that the sense of shared experience - of coming together to achieve - is important to the success of most schemes. As such, she’s taken whatever opportunities she can to involve the school in local and national initiatives.
But all this doesn’t “do” itself. Lynch-Deakin, a senior leader herself, is also the dedicated eco-leader for Heald Place, something she feels is crucial if environmental and sustainable education is to take root and flourish within a school.
“It shows commitment from the senior leadership team and governors - and allows us to be the owners of our work in this area,” she asserts. “If you want to make sustainability a core area for development within the school development plan, you need to put someone in charge of driving it forward.”
Kapacee agrees. “Of course, you need the vision and belief that environmental issues are crucial in children’s education to kick things off, but you also need to think strategically about what to do. Will [the projects] still be working in 10 years’ time? And will you have the right people to make it happen?”
For Lynch-Deakin, the proof that she’s doing a good job comes directly from the children. “I love hearing them ask whether they can become Green Ambassadors,” she says, smiling. “When they tell me that they want to go home and do something they’ve learned, like recycling, that’s when you know you’re doing the right thing.”
Become a Green Ambassador School
Green Ambassadors is all about encouraging a new generation of sustainability champions. Register your school for the WWF flagship programme for schools and you’ll have access to a range of curriculum-linked resources on topical environmental issues, including energy, travel, food, water, plants, animals and recycling.
