The schools trialling this new Award were Newdale Primary School and Priorslee Primary Academy.

Endorsed by the national programme Eco-Schools, five goals formed the basis for achievement of the Award including:

to audit energy usage in school
to promote energy efficiency at school and home
reduce energy usage in school
to learn about the effects of global warming and climate change
to learn about types of renewable energy

Each schools work towards the Award was headed up by a core team of students, along with a lead teacher, who all worked extremely hard to raise awareness of energy throughout their school and promote ways to reduce energy amongst fellow students.

Both schools identified where their electricity use was and placed posters and stickers around to remind all users to switch off items not in use. Many other initiatives during the term led to both schools successfully achieving the Energy Smart Award.

Newdale Primary School created the “Energy Smart Star of the Week” with their “Eco-Committee” inspecting classrooms at lunchtime to check the use of electrical items. The best performing class were awarded the Energy Smart Star of the Week.

Priorslee Primary Academy created their own persuasive adverts promoting sources of renewable energy with a particularly popular slogan being created “Our Earth, Your Earth, Save it”.

Both schools also challenged teachers to give energy-free lessons which they successfully completed even though some teachers felt it would be difficult at first and a few electronic white boards were at initially missed.

Cllr Paul Watling, Cabinet Member for Children, Young People & Families, said: “We all have a responsibility to be aware of how much energy we are using and the effects this has on both a local and global basis.”

“This scheme is inspiring our younger residents to reduce energy use in their school and at home. They are improving their knowledge of energy and educating others too. It’s fantastic news that we can begin to roll this scheme out across the borough.”

Having proved a great success in its first two schools, the Energy Smart Award scheme will now be rolled out to a number of other schools across the Borough from September.