Step 6 Monitoring and Evaluation

• Your Eco-Committee monitors and evaluates the success of projects in their Action Plan for their three chosen topic areas.
• Monitoring and evaluation outcomes are communicated to your whole school and evidence of monitoring and evaluation is displayed on your Eco-Board (physical or digital).

• Evidence of monitoring and evaluation might include: photos, graphs, charts, other charity award schemes, surveys, bills etc.
• Actions in your Action Plan do not have to be entirely successful to achieve an Eco-Schools Green Flag, but when not successful the Eco-Schools team would expect adaptations to have been identified to improve the outcomes of future projects.
• We recommend thinking about Monitoring early, when creating your Action Plan and beginning to look at this section of your Eco-Schools Green Flag Application in December.

Eco-Schools Team Tip

Don’t overthink this step, monitoring can be as simple as before and after photos of a wildflower area or counting bags of litter collected during litter-picks.

• All Ages Bonus Environmental Impact Questions. A document to help you keep track of your progress should you choose to apply for an Eco-Schools Green Flag with Merit or Distinction.

How do we monitor and evaluate?

You can monitor and evaluate a variety of ways some of our suggestions include: before and after photographs, surveys, charts, tables, reports or meter readings. Any way that you can generate numerical data that can then be put into graphs and charts is the most straightforward way.

One of our actions wasn’t successful, what should we do?

At Eco-Schools we acknowledge that the programme is student-led and that not every action the students decide on will be a success. If your school has implemented an action and it hasn’t been a success we still advise you to use this as evidence towards your Green Flag application.

One of our actions isn’t complete, what should we do?

Some of the actions that your Eco-Committee decides upon may take a long time to complete. As long as you have began implementing the actions and can provide evidence of this then please do not hesitate to apply for your Eco-Schools Green Flag Award.

What evidence do we need for Step 6: Monitoring and Evaluation?

During the final stages of your Green Flag application, you will be asked to provide a photograph of your Eco-Board. Evidence of Monitoring and Evaluation on your Eco-Board could include: before and after photographs, surveys, charts, tables, reports or meter readings.

How much evidence do we need?

We request evidence for each of the three topics in your Action Plan.