Scottish Government
 Printable version
|
 E-mail this to a friend
|
Funding for Eco Schools
Increased support for Scotland's Eco Schools Programme has been announced yesterday with £425,000 provided to Keep Scotland Beautiful for the period 2010-11.
Schools Minister Keith Brown announced the funding on a visit to Portobello High School, which is the first secondary school in Scotland to achieve permanent Green Flag status - the highest award under the international Eco School programme.
Mr Brown said:
"Scotland is a leading country within the Eco-Schools movement and pupils are taking forward a wide range of initiatives to increase awareness and involvement in sustainable development and environmental issues in their schools and communities.
"I'm pleased to announce that the Scottish Government is continuing to fund the programme - which now includes more than 95 per cent of Scotland's schools - and which is going from strength to strength with over 900 Green Flag schools in Scotland.
"More schools can also now look to join Portobello High, the first secondary school in Scotland to achieve permanent green flag status and which is now part of a select band of Eco Schools across the globe.
"We want our young people to be responsible and aware of how their actions impact both in their communities and the wider world. This is a key feature of our new approach through Curriculum for Excellence and involvement with Eco Schools gives pupils fantastic new experiences and skills."
Scotland's Eco School's programme is run by Keep Scotland Beautiful. John Summers, Chief Executive of Keep Scotland Beautiful, said:
"Portobello High School deserves enormous credit for being the first secondary school in Scotland to gain its fourth and permanent Green Flag. This consistently high performance by the school shows that secondary schools can be successful when placing sustainable development education at the heart of school activity.
"We were also very impressed by the way in which Portobello High School had integrated its Eco-Schools work with some of the key outcomes of the new Curriculum for Excellence, as well as the way in which they have made links with their local community through their environmental work.
"As 2009 ends on a high for Eco-Schools Scotland, supported by the Scottish Government, we anticipate that 2010 will be even more memorable, with the anticipated award of our 1,000th Green Flag, and Scotland playing host to the worldwide Eco-Schools community when the International Eco-Schools Operators' Meeting is held in Edinburgh in November 2010."
The Eco-Schools programme is an international initiative, in more than 40 countries, that encourages whole-school action for the environment. Schools can apply for three levels of award - Bronze, Silver and Green Flag- with specified criteria at each level.
Eco-Schools Scotland is funded by the Scottish Government and is administered by Keep Scotland Beautiful, the environmental charity who run the Keep Scotland Tidy national anti-litter and waste awareness campaigns.
The Programme is one of the leaders among over 40 countries involved across the world. It is an international initiative designed to encourage whole-school action for the environment. It is an awards scheme which credits schools which make a commitment to continuously improve their environmental process. It also helps raise awareness of environmental and sustainable development issues through activities linked to curriculum subjects and areas.
The number of schools and pre-schools centres registered and participating with Eco Schools currently stands at over 3,400. This means over 95 per cent of the total number of local authority schools are now participating in the Programme. Over 26 per cent of these schools have been awarded the prestigious Green Flag, making Scotland amongst the best performing Eco Schools in the world. The 900th Green Flag was awarded in November 2009 to Brucehill Early Education and Childcare Centre in Dumbarton.
It is expected that the 1000th Green Flag will be awarded in 2010, when Scotland will host the annual Eco-Schools International Conference in November of that year.
