Date posted: 5/12/2025Our Eco Conscience
Kingshott is very proud to be an Eco School and we have achieved our Green Flag status since 2023. Our flag flies proudly over our beautiful nature garden, which every child in the school works in - planting vegetables, watering, harvesting, weeding, pruning and digging together to provide an area of calm for us all to enjoy.
We care passionately about protecting our Earth and have embedded environmental issues throughout the curriculum. From learning about biodiversity in biology, to reading short stories of environmental collapse in English and discovering the best forms of renewable energies in geography, we ensure that all the students are aware of climate change and the imperative to act to protect our precious home.
At the heart of our drive to do more to conserve the environment are the Junior and Senior Eco Committees. These students campaign tirelessly to raise awareness about environmental issues: leading assemblies, writing articles for the newsletter, writing to MPs and councillors, and organising eco inspired projects. Just a few of our recent Eco Committee campaigns include a winter coat recycling station, collecting egg boxes and sweet tubs for recycling, recycling old school uniforms to form scrunchies and bows, and changing the glue sticks that the school uses to ensure that they can all be recycled. In addition, the Eco Committees enjoy enhancing our school environment by planting trees, creating bird feeders, doing litter picks and ensuring that school recycling stations are dealt with effectively. They even do a spot of penguin watching in their spare time, becoming citizen scientists to assist real scientists with their Antarctic conservation projects.
It is no coincidence that one of our four houses is named after the eminent broadcaster and conservationist, Sir David Attenborough. We couldn’t agree more with him when he said:
“It's surely our responsibility to do everything within our power to create a planet that provides a home not just for us, but for all life on Earth” (Sir David Attenborough, November 2021).
If you would like to find out more about what is involved in being an Eco School, please take a look at the Eco Schools home page: https://www.eco-schools.org.uk/
Our Eco Pledge
As a school with the highest values and aspirations, we are committed to developing and maintaining an environmentally friendly teaching and learning environment.
These ideas have been put together by our children, to help us protect our school environment and the wider local environment, and reduce our carbon footprint.
1. Give the car a rest – whenever possible we encourage you to walk, cycle or use public transport.
2. Eat local, buy local and see local – wherever possible our kitchen staff source locally produced food and supplies.
3. Conserve energy – we try to conserve energy, will you help us?
4. Be Water Wise – we use water wisely and don’t leave taps running.
5. Reduce/Reuse/Recycle – whether it be classroom consumables like paper or food, we try to reduce what we use. Where possible resources are reused and we try hard to recycle wisely and thoroughly.
6. Respect nature – we try to look after our local environment and wildlife by not no littering, using the recycling facilities and encouraging local habitats, large and small.
Kingshott ECO Committee
Our ECO Committee is a popular and important group at Kingshott. The Committee is made up from a range of pupils from across the school, all of whom actively choose to take part. The Committee regularly meet to discuss issues and ways to improve the school’s environmental profile, attitude and general performance.
Eco Awards
Kingshott Eco Committee are currently working towards achieving our Eco Schools Green Flag Award for a third year running, which we’re hoping to get at the end of the summer. To keep abreast of our eco activities, please see our latest news section, or our social feed.
Kingshott spent many years working towards the Woodland Trust Green Tree Schools Award . This meant becoming involved in tree planting events at Woodland Trust sites, planting tree packs of our own at Kingshott and developing our own tree nursery. It also involved developing an understanding among children of the value and significance of trees to them and the planet, and the importance of preserving what we have and planting more. Finally, it required the children to actively investigate how to reduce our Carbon Footprint and associated CO2 emissions, including the development of better recycling systems within the school.
In November 2019 the school was awarded the GOLD Award for its efforts! Now Kingshott is busy working towards the Platinum Award.
Environmental Projects
Recycling
We have made sure that every classroom has access to paper recycling bins.
We have built a compost heap from recycled pallets and pupils take part in a composting programme.
A recent innovation has been the recycling programme for classroom pens, hi-lighters and the like. Collection boxes are placed around the school and we are delivering, what would otherwise go to landfill, to a central collection point at a church in Hitchin, who get money for our waste.
Bird Feeders
We want to give nature a home at Kingshott and our bird feeders are one way to achieve this…
Members of the ECO Committee and other interested souls take on the responsibility of providing birds with clean water and a good supply of food.
Trees
We recognise that trees are vital! They provide habitats, improve air quality, deaden noise pollution and make the place look better! The School has a long and continued approach to increasing habitat diversity across its site. Regular tree planting sessions take place each year. So far well over 2250 trees have been planted since 2010 as part of our own eco activities and in conjunction with the Woodland Trust initiatives.
Pupils, parents and staff all take part in regular tree planting sessions. Trees are grown by one of our members of staff, and from little acorns, great trees will grow!
Nature Garden
The aspiration was to create a Nature Area for the children to enjoy and Teachers to use for teaching purposes. It was developed in stages with the financial and physical support of the Kingshott Association. The different parts of the Nature Garden were based on the ideas from the ECO Committee Class Representatives,
