Step 5 Informing and Involving

• Your school has a prominent, designated and up-to-date Eco-Board (physical or digital) detailing all your Eco-Schools work. This includes evidence of topic actions and work on each of the Seven Steps (see criteria for each step for further details).
• Your Eco-Committee communicate with your school in a variety of ways.
• Your whole school has the opportunity to participate in Eco-Schools work.
• Optional for first Eco-Schools Green Flag: Your wider school community benefits from, or is invited to participate in, your Eco-Schools work.

• Your Eco-Committee may communicate their Eco-Schools work in a number of different ways, including: e-newsletters, assemblies, school website, social media etc.
• Your Eco-Committee might choose to involve any of the following members of their wider community in their Eco-Schools work: student’s families, your local authority, utilities providers, local or national businesses, charities, nearby schools or feeder schools, ‘friends of’ groups, places of worship or any other local organisations.
• This step is essentially present throughout your Eco-Schools journey from start to finish. We recommend beginning to look at this section of the Eco-Schools Application as early as October.

Eco-Schools Team Tips

In an early Eco-Committee meeting gather an Eco-Tip from each Eco-Committee member, save these tips and add an ‘Eco-Tip of the Week from the Eco-Committee’ section to your school newsletter – you should have enough tips to last for many school newsletters!

• Secondary Social Media Posts. Social media images, which can be used to highlight and celebrate each step of your Eco-Schools journey.

What does Informing and Involving mean?

To maximise the impact of their Eco-Schools work, the Eco-Committee will need to tell as many people as possible about the work they are carrying out and involve as many people as possible.

How do we inform our school about the Eco-Schools programme?

The first step to informing your school is your Eco-Board: you will be asked to submit a photo of your Eco-Board as evidence during the final stage of your Green Flag application. Other ways we suggest you inform the school is through holding regular assemblies and class presentations about the work your Eco-Committee have completed and organising fun school events and competitions.

How do we involve our school in the Eco-Schools programme?

One of the best ways of involving the whole school is to get involved in one of the many environmentally-friendly events that happen every academic year. For example Keep Britain Tidy runs the Great British Spring Clean and Great Big School clean every March and there are many other examples: it is entirely up to your school and Eco-Committee to choose which events to get involved in based on the topics you have picked for your action plan.

How do we inform our wider community about the Eco-Schools programme?

You can inform the wider community about the Eco-Schools programme through newsletters to parents (e-mailed newsletters are preferable); invitations to class assemblies and school events and through sharing your progress on any social media the school may have. You could also invite members from the wider community to have a presence on your Eco-Committee (dependant on your safeguarding policy) and encourage the community to get involved in schools events such as litter picks.

Can we have an electronic Eco-Board?

In short, yes! We have seen schools have a page on their school website act as an online Eco-Board accessible by both students and parents. We have also seen schools put all of the information required on an Eco-Board in a PowerPoint presentation, which is then displayed on screens throughout the school. If you do decide to create your Eco-Board electronically it is important that it still contains all of the information on our Eco-Board template as we use this as evidence when assessing Green Flag applications.