Slingsby CP School Eco Champions Update September 2026
We are delighted to announce Slingsby School have received an Eco School Green Flag Award with Distinction for the second year in a row! Mrs Breckon, our school governor, and the school Eco Champions have been busy with lots of exciting activities working towards our Eco School Award for 2026.
Thank you to everyone in school, especially Mrs Breckon and our Eco Champions who have met up throughout the year to implement and improve our Eco awareness. This year, as well as incorporating environmental topics into our curriculum, we focused on three areas for our award:
Healthy Living
The Eco Champions designed healthy food ideas to go into packed lunch boxes and then we shared our ideas with parents. The whole school took part in Children’s Mental Health week trying out yoga, mindfulness and culminating in a ‘Come as Yourself’ day to raise funds for the Charity.
Energy
For a second year running we took part in Cut your Carbon November and as a whole school community we had a carbon saving of 611.05 kgCO2e and hopefully many of the carbon cutting ideas will be carried on by many families. We had good fun using a thermal imaging camera loaned to us by the Hovingham Environment Group Project Purple. The Eco Champions looked at areas around school that were losing heat and also managed to prove that our newly installed plastic strip curtains at the outside doors were doing their job. Project purple were so impressed with the Children’s work they asked if they could use us as an example to people in the village of the uses and benefits of the camera which can be borrowed.
Global Citizenship
We have been working on this topic over the last term and we decided to adopt an animal from WWF in order to highlight the work they do to help endangered animals. The Eco Champions voted to adopt a Giant Panda who has now arrived in school (in toy form!) and they have named him Po. The Panda will become our Eco mascot and hopefully encourage each class to think more about what they can do to help with recycling, sustainability and climate change in general. The children helped raise funds to adopt Po by coming to school dressed as either a wild animal or an explorer. They spent time in their house groups learning about the Giant Panda and why it is endangered. They had a really Wild time!
We also recently found out that we have achieved the North Yorkshire Council Healthy Schools Green Award which we are very proud of. We were awarded this by putting together a Climate Action Plan for the school, which can be found on our website.
We have had a really productive year, thank you to everyone who took part in various activities and have helped make this possible.