Welcome to Brackenbury Primary School’s Eco-Schools page. We began our Eco-Schools journey in September 2019 and our Eco-Committee quickly gained the Bronze Award. A year later in December 2020 we were awarded the Silver Award. Our next step was to become a ‘Green Flag’ School which we achieved in September 2021!

Brackenbury Primary School has been rewarded the prestigious Green Flag in the Eco-Schools Award. Two children in each year group have been a member of the Eco-Committee for two years, meeting regularly, creating an action plan and ensuring the actions are fulfilled within the classrooms.

Teachers spent time looking at all subjects taught and finding eco-links in the curriculum. We have tackled the issues of waste by monitoring that paper is being recycled correctly in classrooms, holding a ‘Paper-Free Day’ and using new compost bins to enable us to use food waste to fertilise our plants. On the topic of energy, we have asked the council for the school’s energy provider to be green, cut down on our energy use with ‘Switch off Fortnight’ and a Screen-Free Day, as well as monitoring switches, lights, screens being turned off when not in use.

For our marine topic, the committee has focussed on banning single-use plastics at school and taking part in a litter pick with Plogolution to prevent plastics ending up in the River Thames (and future plans for all children in the school to do at least one ‘plog’ per academic year linked to PE), while staff have focussed on educating about the effect of global warming on sea temperatures, rising water levels, death of coral and over-fishing.

Eco-Curriculum

Our Eco-School curriculum has been mapped out and can be viewed below
Brackenbury curriculum overviewhere is our  of current coverage of links to the Eco-Schools topics of biodiversity, energy, global citizenship, healthy living, litter, marine, school grounds, transport, waste and water:

eduCCate Project

Brackenbury has begun its ‘eduCCate Global’ journey to develop our very own cross-curricular climate change education and sustainability curriculum! More information can be found on the website:

Educcateglobal Website

 Learning on Waste, Energy and Marine

Take a look at some of the amazing learning about our three chosen topics of Waste, Energy and Marine completed by children across the school from years one to year six by looking at the Examples of Work below.Examples of Work

Screen-Free Day – Wednesday 26th May 2021  

“I liked when we did phonics using cards instead of the screen – we want to do it more!” Year one child.

“ Today was different because we used flipchart paper. We did science and PE mixed outside mixed which was fun. In our classroom, we put the blinds up to the top and turned off the lights, so there was natural light on all the sides!” Year three child.

“It was really fun because we go to participate more. In maths, we were doing parallel lines and perpendicular lines. Our teacher’s drawings weren’t as neat as on the whiteboard because there’s that ruler setting but it didn’t matter. I liked how children were called up to circle on the paper. It was nice the screen not being on because we shared some reading with our partners.” Year five child.

“I’ve enjoyed that teachers have helped us and the Eco-Committee with our goals to save energy as we have planned this for ages. Normally our interactive whiteboard screen is on even when we don’t need it so it was good for it to be off for a whole day. It was more fun than usual because we took part in different activities!” Year six child.

Paper Free Day - 14 July 2021

“We used scrap paper for our learning questions and I liked it because it’s saving paper.” Year five child.

“We did nothing in our books today. We used whiteboards in maths and did acting a story in English.” Year one child.

“We wrote the learning questions into our books instead of sticking them in guided reading. I haven’t seen any printing today. I loved maths because we were measuring angles on our tables and we didn’t touch our books!” Year four child.

“We didn’t use any new paper, just added to what we had already started on our projects. We also did some rehearsals without paper!” Year six child.

Updated news on eduCCate

Brackenbury has been a part of the Hammersmith and Fulham goal of being the greenest borough in the country. Ms Czyba has been an active member of the Climate Champions network group, sharing best practice and taking inspiration from others’. We signed up for the United Nations Climate Change eduCCate courses in which staff at the school become qualified climate change and sustainability teachers. Currently six teachers have completed the UN accreditation by undertaking the courses and gaining over 70% in the tests. The rest of the school staff are about to begin the online training. Mr Parker, one of the support group members of the educate team talked about the courses he did, “I found human health really interesting, understanding about how flooding and disease are affected by climate. I also did sustainable diet: how fishing is at a low and that we are wasting far too much food.” Another teacher, Ms Bolado, who also delivered training to all staff said, “I enjoyed delivering my part in the staff training, especially as I have found out so many new facts that I did not know about climate change which are shocking, making me feel really committed to my role now.” A receiver of the training, Ms Martin recounted, “I found the training really helpful because it is so useful to know how to talk to children about climate change in language they understand. I found the resources and ideas shared inspired me to talk to the children about our world and how it is changing.”

We have been awarded the UN eduCCate Bronze certification, as the whole school community has taken part in two Carbon Footprint Buster Challenges (children, parents and staff members), such as becoming ‘Flexitarians’ and switching to green/sustainable energy suppliers. A child in year three said about the challenges: “I saved the environment by using less energy, playing in the garden a lot and having a good time with my family.” A year five child remembered, “I helped by not having as much meat on the plate and more vegetables. I had more stuff from the salad bar at school because that is actually really yummy.”

 Carbon Buster Challenges

The whole school community will take part in Carbon Footprint Buster Challenges every month. The challenges were launched on Monday 14^th June. The first challenge is to make sustainable (mostly vegan) food choices for a week in June. In July, the challenge will be to switch to a renewable/green energy company. Classes with the most children completing the challenges will be rewarded!

Challenge One  

Challenge Two

Challenge Three - Single Use Water Bottles 

The school has gained sponsorship from a local estate agents, Kinleigh Folkard & Hayward for 250 metal water bottles with the school’s logo to sell with support from our PSA (Parent-Staff Assosciation). We aim to have every person bringing in only reusable water bottles to school and ban single-use plastics. Kinleigh Folkard & Hayward have said: ‘We are proud to be sponsoring the reusable water bottles for Brackenbury Primary School in their mission to reduce their carbon footprint. At KFH Hammersmith, we are also conscious of our impact on the environment and are committed to banning single use plastic bottles in our branch.’ We want this pledge to be an inspiration to other Eco-Schools to do something similar and we want to hear the same promises from all local businesses in Hammersmith and Fulham.

Eco-Code

Our Eco-Committee have all contributed to Brackenbury’s new Eco-Code, focusing on our three topics and the actions we have implemented which have been successful. This is for everyone in the school to agree to follow and there is a copy displayed in every classroom: