HSOG awarded sixth Eco Schools Scotland Green Flag Award

The Eco Schools Scotland Green Flag Award, run by Keep Scotland Beautiful, is an internationally recognised achievement for schools committed to Learning for Sustainability. To gain its sixth consecutive Green Flag Award, the High School successfully illustrated how it has embedded sustainability across both the curriculum and day-to-day school life in the Junior and Senior School. The Junior School Eco Committee, led by Mrs Maggie Pollock, and the Senior School Eco Committee, led by Mrs Jennifer Lewis, played key roles in driving these initiatives forward.

Every single pupil at the Junior School is part of a Pupil Committee, providing them the opportunity to get involved in school matters and effect change for the better. Among these are the Eco Committee, Global Citizenship Committee and the Outdoor Learning Committee, all of which worked together across a number of the initiatives that helped to secure the School’s sixth Green Flag. To ensure pupil advocacy across the whole school journey, the Senior School also has an Eco Committee and a Green Fingers Club who were heavily involved too.

With a firm foundation on which to grow the High School’s commitment to sustainability, the Junior School has been hard at work to encourage greater biodiversity in the school grounds by taking part in a number of activities. The children have developed the bug hotel, introduced bee hotels and a wormery and tended to bird boxes and planters, all to ensure a thriving variety of bird, bug and plant life on campus. Other activities have included nurturing seedlings in the greenhouse to sell to the local community to support others to encourage diversity in their own gardens; growing a variety of root vegetables at school to turn into home-made soup; and even planting a school Christmas tree with proceeds from the annual plant sale.

As part of the focus on Climate Action, the Junior School has made a huge effort to reduce the amount of energy used during the school day by encouraging everyone to switch off their lights and other electrical items when not in use. The Eco Committee in their role as ‘Power Police’ would carry out regular inspections, leaving ‘energy tickets’ for members of staff. Junior 2 carried out litter picks at Lennox Park in conjunction with their ‘My Local Community’ topic with children making observations about the types of rubbish they found and its impact on the environment.

There’s been a big focus on litter and waste across both the Junior and Senior School with pupils taking part in Greenpeace’s Big Plastic Count 2024, an initiative which focuses on raising awareness about plastic waste and its impact. Transitus (Primary 7) took the lead on this initiative, collecting and categorising plastic waste from their households over the course of a week. They found that 78% of the plastic collected was food and drink packaging, 13% was toiletries and cleaning products, and 9% fell into other categories, highlighting the volume of single-use plastic still relied on in households.

At the Junior School, the results from the waste they’d collected and analysed as part of the Big Plastic Count prompted children to run a Zero Waste tuck-shop and implement a number of Plastic Free Fridays, where children were encouraged to bring lunch and snack that didn’t come in a plastic wrapper. Children designed posters to promote their events and encourage one another to take part.

Single-use plastic water bottles are no longer on sale in the Senior School Refectory, replaced by cartons of water, as well as water stations located throughout the school. Food waste has been reduced with the installation of a hot composter, with the subsequent compost being put to good use in the greenhouse by the Green Fingers Club and the Biology Department who grow their own beetroot, potatoes, onions and plants for practical curriculum work. Home-made bird feeders have been installed in the wild garden and hedge saplings have been planted around the perimeter of the grounds with help from members of the HSOG community. Among other initiatives, a Cut Out Cars Day was organised by the Senior School Eco Committee to encourage staff and pupils to come to school on foot, bike or via public transport, and, on National Plant a Flower Day, every classroom across the Senior School was gifted a plant to remind the School community about the important contribution flowers and plants make to the environment, and the benefits of having these in a workspace. In addition, the Senior School Eco Committee has been upcycling used water bottles to donate to charity HomeStart, with over 80 collected at the time of counting, giving them a new lease of life and preventing them from going to landfill.

Of course, no summary of all of the sustainable and environmentally friendly activities undertaken by High School pupils would be complete without mentioning a standout event from the school’s 900th anniversary activities: planting 900 trees at Cathkin Braes. Thanks to the hard work of around 200 pupils from Senior 2, Transitus and Junior 5, alongside mentors from Glasgow City Council’s Community Woodlands, Greenspace and Biodiversity project, and The Conservation Volunteers, at the end of the two days in February 2024, 3600 saplings and hedgerows were planted ready to attract biodiversity to the area and leave a lasting legacy.

In addition to the renewal of the Eco Schools Scotland Green Flag, the Junior School also recently discovered it has achieved Level 3 of the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) School Gardening Awards. These awards provide a structure to develop gardening through the curriculum all while celebrating progress. In order to achieve Level 3 status, the children had to show how they’ve extended the range of plants they are growing, that they are keeping them healthy and using planet-friendly approaches when gardening. A huge well done for these green-fingered efforts!