Montrose School

Sustainability

At Montrose Primary School, we have an ambitious green vision: to provide our children with an outstanding environmental education which empowers them to protect our precious planet, now and in the future. Our vision is broken down into three core areas:

Our Children

Our Team

Our Site

For every child to understand why we need to protect our planet, how we can do it, and to have the opportunity to engage in empowered action to protect the planet throughout their time at Montrose School.

For every member of our team to be environmentally conscious, and to engage in environmentally positive behaviours, both in and out of the workplace.

For our teaching staff to be confident delivering climate education across the curriculum.

To share our practice with other schools on a local and national level

To become a ‘net zero’ school which is rich biodiversity and is well-adapted to the challenges posed by climate change.

Our Climate Action Plan for 2024/25 can be found in the documents tab at the bottom of this page ('Sustainability Strategy and Action Plan').

Our Children

Environmental education is a golden thread which runs across many of our core and foundation subjects. For example, children learn about the concept of interdependence in science so that they are able to appreciate the connections between living things and the impact that species losses can have on wider ecosystems. We are excited to develop our environmental education further in the 2024/25 academic year through the 'Our School, Our World' project.

We also work with external organisations to enhance the environmental education children receive at Montrose School. This has included:

The Sustainable Schools Team (Leicester City Council)
Biffa/Leicester City Council
Wombles (Litter Education)
Severn Trent
EarthSense (https://www.earthsense.co.uk/post/leicester-and-newport-celebrate-clean-air-day-2024-with-earthsense-giving-local-schoolchildren-the)

The children are heavily involved in the environmental projects at Montrose. In the last few years, we have engaged in a range of projects, including:

Installing bee posts with the Leicester City Council Tree Wardens.
Installing SuDS planters with a generous grant from the Severn Trent Community Fund (https://www.stwater.co.uk/news/news-releases/school-children-in-leicester-turn-to-suds-to-help-protect-local-/).
Renovating the Year 2 Eco Garden and creating microhabitats such as rotting log piles.
Monitoring our energy usage using the Energy Sparks program.
Litter collection by prefects at lunch times.
Recycling: pens; batteries; mini whiteboards; crisp packets; toner cartridges; and glue sticks.
Developing a sustainability policy.
Campaigning to cut the amount of laminating we do as a school.
Cutting our baseload energy usage by switching off appliances at the wall.
Engaging with the National Education Nature Park programme. You can hear more about our achievements in the first year of the programme by watching the video below.

Our Site

We have considered how to manage the site in environmentally friendly ways, with the aim of becoming a 'Net Zero' school. For example, we have installed solar panels and an air source heat pump in order to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. In order to manage green waste effectively and keep the carbon on-site, we have built leaf litter bins and dead hedges. This has also created valuable habitats for a range of wildlife.

Part of our Sustainability Strategy for 2024-2027 includes measures to adapt the school site to the most pressing climate threats the UK faces (such as rising temperatures, drought and flooding). This has included installing SuDS and water butts to attenuate water flow during heavy rain and addressing rising temperatures by planting trees or shrubs near windows in direct sunlight to create more shade.

You can check out the wildlife we have spotted on our site by exploring our iNaturalist page: https://uk.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&user_id=nenp_montrose&verifiable=any