Teaching our children about caring for the environment is an important part of the West Jesmond Curriculum. Community is one of the 4 drivers of the curriculum and we challenge our children to play an active part in, not only understanding the risks the local and international environment, but also how they can play an active part in making a positive difference.
Key themes, such as climate change, are taught through Science, PSHE, assemblies, theme weeks and our annual Green Day. Our learning is enhanced through a wide range of visits and visitors and regular campaigns led by our children.
We are very proud to have gained the International Eco-Schools Award Distinction in 2024-25 for the work we are doing in improving sustainability and environmental learning.
Over the last few years West Jesmond Children have been involved in food waste campaigns, collecting litter in the locality, working alongside our community, raising the profile of global challenges and fund raising.
Our Eco Committee
Our children take an active lead in promoting our Eco-learning.
At West Jesmond Primary School, our Eco Committee work hard to ensure we are all environmentally conscious and do our bit to protect our world. Each class from Year 1 right through to Year 6 has an eco rep and deputy whose job it is to represent their class at our meetings. We create an action plan every year and review the impact we have on the school.
We are always striving to make our school more eco-friendly, and have recently received our fifth Green Flag in recognition of our eco work.
Some of the things we have do include:
- Work with the Jesmond Community Orchard volunteers including activities such as apple tree grafting!
- Weekly visits to our school allotment to cultivate and manage produce.
- Half termly ‘Earth Hours’ in a bid to save energy and raise awareness across school of electricity wastage.
- Litter picks around the school grounds and our local area.
- Plastic free pledges in a bid to reduce the amount of single use plastic being used both within school and at home.
- Eco brick creation – reuse of single use plastics to create a building material.
- Taking part in ‘Waste Week’ – we have managed to halve our general waste production with the introduction of a new recycling scheme.
- ‘The Big Pedal’ – encouraging our friends to walk, cycle or scoot to school for a fortnight.
Recent achievements:
- Eat Smart Food Waste project! We reduced our waste each week by 71kg. That's 260 fewer meals going into the bin and £570 saved in a week. That's a reduction of 27%!
- Organised and led a whole school Cut Your Carbon campaign
- Presented at Jesmond Library’s ‘Climate Action’ meeting.
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We sent our Year 5 and 6 Eco Representatives to the Net Zero Hero event Civic Centre
- ‘Switch off Fortnight’ – a two week campaign to reduce energy usage across school.
- St. Hilda’s Festival of Decorated Christmas Trees – winners for our recycled tree!
- Created a whole school Eco Code
- Organised our green Day