Sustainability

Perry Hall’s award-winning sustainability programme, including our Go Green Club and Eco Committee, provides a unique opportunity that empowers pupils to lead change within their school and have a positive impact in their wider community. The programme encourages pupils of all ages and abilities to work together to develop their knowledge and environmental awareness. We have found evidence of the positive impact on pupils, including increased confidence, development of leadership skills, improved pupil wellbeing and behaviour and greater motivation at school.

As well as the pupil benefits, which have a hugely positive effect on the whole school community, Perry Hall has benefited by reducing our environmental impact. Our Eco Committee work exceptionally hard to promote and spread awareness to the rest of the school about sustainability isuues, as well as lead on specific Eco projects.

Our Go Green Club, is a lunchtime club that meets weekly to discuss sustainability issues that are pertinent to them and potential fundraising opportunities, which can benefit our school or environmental charities. Their most recent project has been 'The Welly Gang' project: where the children have collected donations of second-hand wellies and sold these to Perry Hall families and the money raised has been donated to adopt a panda from WWF and purchase more plants for our school garden. 

An example of one of the Eco Committee's projects which has been most impactful on our environmental footprint at Perry Hall is the implementation of making composting intrinsic in school life. We compost all of our food waste, from both play time and lunch time in our aerobic, catering size composter. The compost is then mixed with soil and used in our edible garden to grow produce. Each year group chooses which fruit and vegetables to grow to support their cooking curriculum and any food waste is then returned to the compost cycle. This ever-evolving, tangible process enables our children to experience the full and fascinating cycle of growing, cooking, eating and composting waste, which is not only beneficial at returning carbon to our environment, it is also proven that interacting with soil is proven to benefit our mental health. To watch a video on how we compost at Perry Hall, please click here.

In 2021, Perry Hall Primary School was delighted to be named the UK Champion for the Primary Awards for Green Education in Schools (formerly known as the Better Energy School Awards), an initiative by the Young People's Trust for the Environment, for our Pass-It-On project. Peter Littlewood, Director of the YTPE, said: “It has been fantastic to see the amazing reuse schemes that Perry Hall Primary School has introduced. They not only help to save parents money; they stop items from going to landfill and reduce the need for new items to be produced too". For more information on our award, please click here.

Most recently, in June 2022, we were again thrilled to be named Regional Champion for Southern and Central England in the Primary Awards for Green Education for our 'Marine Marvels' project.  Peter Littlewood, Director of the YTPE, said: "We loved the promotional video for the diary writing competition, whilst the diaries themselves were so good!  The mural designs were also surperb and we thought the Promise Tree was an excellent idea. Congratulations to all the children and staff at Perry Hall Primary School who took part in your amazing project and all the other fantastic environmental projects you have going on at the school!" For more information on our award, please click here.

At Perry Hall we have also achieved the Eco School's prestigious Green Flag award. The passion and hard work that is shared between staff, volunteers and pupils has allowed us to make great strides in reducing our carbon impact. We plan to continue this even further and we are constantly finding more ways in which we can help our planet and school even further.

Edible Garden

Our pupils' emotional wellbeing is extremely important to us here at Perry Hall. We want children who are successful, resilient learners but what is equally important to us is that they are healthy and content children, both mentally and physically, who are able to approach any challenge with positivity.

Our edible garden is not only used to grow produce to support our cooking curriculum and feed our animals, it has a beneficial effect on the well-being of pupils and staff. As a school, with the help of some wonderful parent volunteers, we came up with an action plan for what we would like to see in the garden.  The children thought it would be nice if we created a quiet place where people could go and sit, relax and reflect. The garden also provides sensory stimulation, so there is always lots to see, hear, feel, and smell. All children have the opportunity to help grow and harvest fruit and vegetables which will be used in cooking across the curriculum. The garden has also been awarded the RHS 5-star gardening award.

School Animals

As a school we believe that caring for animals supports our pupils' social and emotional development. It teaches them empathy, care, love, compassion, understanding, commitment and a respect for the animal kingdom. We are lucky enough to have chickens (Bella and Perry), ducks (Commander Quackers, Lord Quakington, Sonic, Fluffy and Diffy) and a pair of guinea pigs (Clover and Honey), as well as regular visits from our therapy dog Ramsey and Teddy the reading dog. Our animals were named by our pupils through a school wide digital democratic voting process. The children take much pleasure in interacting with our animals and and caring for them. Our chicken eggs are used within our cooking curriculum and the children feed our animals produce from our edible garden. 

Click here to find out more information about the work of our Eco Committee

UK Champion 2021