Green schools to harness a £500,000 ‘windfall’

Dec 18 2007 by Rob Merrick, Liverpool Daily Post

SOLAR panels and wind turbines will be installed at eight new Merseyside and Cheshire schools to help fight global warming.

Each of the schools will receive around £500,000 to slash emissions of carbon dioxide by around 60%, the Government announced.

Other measures to improve energy efficiency could include insulated windows, low-emission light bulbs, heating using recycled wood pellets and using rainwater to flush toilets.

The schools could also recycle paper, plant rooftop shrubbery to improve drainage and give children their own gardens to grow vegetables.

The eight schools – either new, or being rebuilt – are (the first four are all Liverpool:

Gateacre Community Comprehensive

West Derby Comprehensive

King David High

Cardinal Heenan

Litherland High, Sefton

Woodchurch High, Wirral

A yet-to-be-named city academy planned for Newton, St Helens

A yet-to-be-named city academy for Ellesmere Port.

The schools are among 200 across England to receive £500,000 under a £110m scheme.

The initiative will build on the pioneering Liverpool's St Francis of Assisi Academy, in Kensington – the first UK school to specialise in caring for the environment. Up to 3% of its power comes from a solar-powered atrium harnessing the sun's rays and each Year Seven class has its own garden.

When then education secretary Alan Johnson visited the St Francis of Assisi Academy a year ago, he praised it as "brilliant" and pledged other "green" schools would follow.

Heads will also be encouraged to give pupils a 'Carbon Detectives Kit', to investigate their school's carbon footprint and take action to reduce it.

And some of the funds may be spent on twinning with schools abroad, to learn how to tackle issues such as rainforest preservation and planting new forests.

Yesterday's announcement is the first step in the Government's plans to make all schools entirely carbon neutral by 2016. Ed Balls, the children's secretary, has acknowledged the necessary technology does not yet exist and will appoint a task force, in the New Year, to close the gap.

Mr Balls said: "We are taking action now to reduce carbon emissions in new school buildings, while we work towards the zero carbon goal.

"This provides an additional £500,000k for the average secondary school, to invest in energy efficiency and renewable energy measures."

The Building Schools for the Future programme sees the Government is rebuilding, or refurb- ishing, every secondary school in England.

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