Outdoor Education

All our students in the Primary School take part in regular Outdoor Learning lessons twice every term. Their work is directly connected to the learning in the classroom. Year 6 complete their Foresters Award at the end of each year. On top of that, the BSBees, our whole school Eco Club, is one of the largest clubs in the school with over 50 students attending each week. They maintain the school gardens, care for the animals, raise awareness of global issues, learn from and about nature and check every class is doing all they can for the environment to win the prestigious weekly Golden Boot award.

What was clear from the start was that bringing all these amazing initiatives and projects together under the Sustainability umbrella was going to take a collaborative effort.

“We are all working together towards a common goal,” said Kate. “When we could see what was happening around campus, in all parts of the school, we approached everyone: we talked to Esther (O’Connor, Team Leader Primary), we grabbed Paul Christmas, the Secondary Department Leader for Geography, we talked to the whole of the Geography department actually; the outdoor learning team; science, food technology - everyone. Let’s come together, we said, and do it all together.”

In the short few months that followed, huge steps were taken to link and embed existing and new projects throughout the school, with students taking an active lead. Thanks to a whole school student survey, a huge wild garden has been created with students from Primary to Secondary helping our gardeners plant it full of trees and wild flowers.

“The garden gives us the opportunity to not just talk about nature and learn about it from a book but go out there and actually do it,” said Kate. “The Wild Garden, with its dedicated play area, waters features, wildflowers and willow tunnel, is really lovely and forms part of our plan for a green corridor which will eventually link every part of the school through nature, another green aspect of our campus development plan.” Additionally, BSB has formed links with the local Transition Network in our community and joined forces with other local schools to create a conference. This will ultimately lead to students creating climate policy to be considered for local parliament.

The collaborative effort to create a whole school focus on sustainability also fed into an initiative that was placed at the heart of the role the Sustainability Champions took on: to raise the profile of Sustainability and environmental education at BSB and win Eco Schools status within one school year.

The Eco Schools programme encourages young people to engage in their environment by allowing them the opportunity to actively protect it. Through this programme, young people experience a sense of achievement at being able to have a say in the environmental management policies of their schools, ultimately steering them towards certification and the prestige which comes with being awarded a Green Flag, an international accreditation that has recognised and rewarded young people’s environmental actions for over 25 years.

All the hard work was rewarded in May 2022 when the school was awarded the prestigious Eco-School status after completing an intensive programme of activities and target achievement, and successfully navigating an on-site interview by representatives of the organisation who praised BSB’s “very impressive” efforts.

“This is really quite a big deal actually,” said Kate. “Eco Schools is the largest and oldest recognition of education for sustainable development globally and we appear to be the first international school in Belgium to have been awarded this status.”

After the two representatives of the EcoSchool Committee visited the school to conduct the final assessment, the school was awarded the Green Flag, an international accreditation that has recognised and rewarded young people’s environmental actions for over 25 years and BSB was officially given the status of an Eco School.

“We are very proud to be given the Green Flag,” said Kate. “The flag acknowledges the work of all involved and puts the students firmly in the driving seat for initiatives that untimately benefit the whole school community.”

By becoming an Eco-School, BSB has taken a further step on a meaningful path towards improving the environmental footprint of the school, a change which will inevitably leads to a more sustainable, more responsible and less costly school environment. It also brings BSB into an international community of participating institutions and provides the school with an opportunity to share environmental information, and cultural exchanges with other Eco-Schools all over the world. “We are not only honoured to be awarded the prestigious Eco School status, which is just reward for all the hard work our students and teachers have put into their sustainability projects, but we are also immensely proud of all those involved,” said Neil Ringrose, Head of Primary and one of the Vice-Principals at BSB.

“Our community at BSB strive to be an educational force for good and one aspect of that is to develop confident, caring and courageous people who engage actively, ethically and purposefully with the world around us. Our students have shown these qualities by exhibiting a deep respect for the environment and an understanding of how their actions can help protect the planet, while encouraging others to do so too.”

Getting to grips with nature