St Bede's

St Bede’s Catholic High School is a secondary school with 720 students in Lytham St Annes, Lancashire. It aims to build and reinforce a ‘green’ ethos and culture and develop the school site as an exemplar for sustainability.

St Bede’s have seen through many of their plans from the end of the BGC year and in the past year the school has installed 99 solar PV panels with an output of approx 14,000 kWh (with the help of external consultants on the planning permission and building regulations). These panels were funded with £50,000 from The Low Carbon Buildings Programme, £30,000 from an EDF grant, and £20,000 from Lancashire Energy Loans. There is now a carbon display for the solar panels which shows how much CO2 is being saved.

They have also completed installation of the largest school geodesic solardome in the UK, with help from the Eden Project, to provide a growing space to aid pupils’ learning about climate, agriculture, biodiversity and the environment. Plans remain for further installations such as an air source heat pump, energy bike and solar thermal panels. The school has also taken steps to improve the school environment and encourage biodiversity on the school grounds.

Though the green initiatives are led by the head teacher, green issues are on the agenda throughout the school structures (school council, form councils, heads of year meetings). The ‘green’ culture and majority of activities from the BGC also remain embedded (e.g. green school shop, recycling, fair trade, and work on the allotments and in the orchard), though there is now less emphasis on changing environmental behaviour at home (the CO2 challenge has been discontinued as planned) and one-off events.

St Bede’s have already taken steps to disseminate what they have learned, and in the BGC year set up the easy2begreen website which provides a toolkit for adopting the CO2 challenge in other schools, as well as advice for schools on developing education on sustainability and applying for funding. Over the last year the website has largely been used by St Bede’s, but the school’s recent application to the Ashden awards is focused on encouraging uptake of the CO2 challenge in other schools within Lytham.