This week, some of our children had the opportunity to take a closer look at our school grounds through a very different lens!

 A representative from our School Council, a representative from our Eco Council and our Head Gardener joined Mrs Nelson and Niki from Learning through Landscapes to complete a Climate Ready School Grounds Audit.

The audit explores how school grounds can help address the impacts of climate change, whilst also creating outdoor environments that support nature, learning and play.

Together, the children investigated a range of different areas, including how our grounds manage temperature, water and carbon, the biodiversity, and habitats they support, air quality, and how effectively our outdoor spaces are used for learning and play.

 This wasn’t just a case of looking around the grounds either! The children became climate investigators, using equipment to take measurements including wind speed, soil temperature and surface temperature, gathering real data from different areas of our school grounds. The results from the comprehensive survey will be sent to us shortly and will help us identify both the strengths of our grounds and areas where we could make further improvements.

 We did, however, get a little sneak peek at some of our scores,  and we were absolutely delighted!

Our school grounds achieved an incredible 100% in the Nature section. Niki told us that she had never seen a school achieve a full 100% in this area before!

 We were equally thrilled to discover that we scored a fantastic 96% for Sustainability.

With so much work having gone into developing our school grounds, creating habitats for wildlife, growing food, composting, collecting rainwater and making our outdoor spaces richer for both children and nature, these results were wonderful to hear.

 We’re now looking forward to receiving the full report and discovering what our next steps could be as we continue to make our school grounds an even more climate-ready, nature-rich and inspiring place for our children to learn, play and grow.