We thought you may like to read our Green Flag with Distinction accreditation below, which we are very proud of! An enormous thank you goes to our staff, pupils and students who have worked very hard to promote Eco Awareness in our school and fly the Eco flag!

"Congratulations! We are very pleased to tell you that you and your Eco-Committee at Bury Grammar Schools have been successful in meeting the requirements for the Eco-Schools Green Flag Award.

We reviewed your application and noted the following:

It's wonderful that you have appointed such a representative Eco-Committee, this shows your school’s excellent commitment to both the programme and the eco-cause. It’s great to see that you had such a group of eager, enthusiastic volunteers. It was also wonderful to see that they were supported by two members of staff and that key members of the SLT were kept informed.

It was wonderful to see how completing your Environmental Review helped to raise the level of awareness in your school and helped your Eco-Committee to identify the issues and spot gaps in your school's existing environmental activity. It was also brilliant to read that the Environmental Review helped your pupils appreciate everything that your school is already doing to benefit our environment and identify areas to work on in the future. It was great to see how you carefully considered findings from your Environmental Review and factored them into the creation of your Action Plan. A great sign of critical thinking!

Your Action Plan shows that your Eco-Committee have carefully considered how they can involve their entire school in their planned Eco-Schools’ activities to achieve maximum impacts and raise awareness amongst their school community. We love the range of activities that you and your Eco-Committee planned for delivery. The fact that they cover both indoor (banning single-use plastics and vending machines, promoting re-usable bottles, healthier food options, Yoga and Mindfulness sessions) and outdoor (planting your Eco Garden for birds, insects and your own produce, re-using old pots, leaf mould composting, regular litter-picks and providing more bins) activities is excellent. It was also great to see accountability and monitoring and evaluation clearly marked in your Action Plan. Great work!

Your Curriculum Link examples are imaginative, practical and fun, making environmental education accessible and engaging, well done! We’re really impressed at how you’ve linked environmental issues to a variety of curriculum areas. We loved seeing the superb examples of your curriculum planners, Schemes of Work, photos of your pupil’s work (especially the lovely new Eco Garden), their displays and of them enjoying their activities. This is a great example of layering in sustainability and climate change into your studies. We loved reading about how you had incorporated learning about global issues firmly into the Geography Curriculum in your school. Great work! A challenge for next year might be expanding this to incorporate these issues into other areas of learning like Science, English, Maths, Art or D&T! Your Eco-Board is great. Your board is incredibly visual and engaging and promotes your work in a very attractive way.

We loved hearing how active your Eco-Committee was in communicating their activities school-wide with both assembly and class feedback and use of the school social media as well as the Eco-board itself. These all combine to make a great approach! We love that your pupils have taken their great work beyond the school gates and into their local area working with the Bury Canal Trust to carry out some great community canal clean-ups. We are certain that your pupils will have greatly benefitted from your involvement with such outside organisations as the East Lancashire Railway, with whom you are working on a future project to create a wonderful new forest school area, and the WWF, for whom you held fundraisers.

The parent quote is a great testament to the work that you are doing with your Eco-Committee, that they are taking their Eco-Schools work home with them and getting their families on board is something to be proud of!

"The eco/gardening committee has helped my daughter gain some new friends that are interested in the same issues. Alongside this, it has also provided a safe space for her to be anytime that she needs it."

We thought your Eco-Code was brilliant! It was punchy and really creative, setting out tangible and accessible calls to action your whole school can get behind!

I hope you and your Eco-Committee take great pride in your achievements, when listed it's almost astonishing how many there are – however, the improvements to your school environment with the various litter and plastics reducing, waste recycling and Healthy Living initiatives and, most of all, your fabulous new Eco Garden and canal clean (we loved those) all nicely stand out!

Congratulations to everyone for the great work you have managed to do, earning your Green Flag with Distinction in style. You should all be very proud of your work and the application you have submitted!

Special thanks to Mrs Nina Underhill (PA to Director of Finance) for her fantastic work in this area!