Cardinal Wiseman RC School
Teaching Awards 2009 Winner
The DfE Award for Sustainable Schools
Cardinal Wiseman RC School, COVENTRY
It is impossible to separate sustainability from the religious ethos at Cardinal Wiseman RC School. Staff and pupils feel a strong responsibility to the world around them.
The commitment to sustainable education is firmly embedded in the curriculum. The sense of caring manifests itself in the strong links the school enjoys with a partner school in Malawi and an orphanage in India.
Cardinal Wiseman was one of the first schools to gain Specialist School Rural Dimension status. It has a national reputation for its farm and gardens, earning a visit from the Prince of Wales last year, who was given a scarf made from alpaca wool, cultivated on its farm.
Pupils participate in the school’s Animal Club, Garden Club and schemes such as
Environmental Monitors. Locally, the school organises an annual Pet Show, and Farm Trail visits from primary schools. Students produce their own Fairtrade Tea named ‘Cardinal Tea’, and have secured distribution deals with local supermarkets and farm shops, with plans to expand the business to include chocolate production.
Cardinal Wiseman is an innovator in environmental qualifications. Its BTec First Diploma in Animal Care attracts students from all over Coventry, and it is developing a new Environmental and Land-based Diploma, which will be available by 2013. The school plans to build a regional Environmental Education Centre as part of its Building Schools for the Future programme.
The school has made significant changes to its school meals, with a reduction in the amount of salt used, and provides free or subsidised fruit, under its Food for Life Campaign. It makes its own sausages and burgers, and produces its own eggs. The school’s compost won an award at Garden Organic in 2008.
Improvements to school grounds have included a programme of tree-planting, as well as the installation of bat and bird boxes around the site. Awareness of waste and energy reduction reduced the electricity bill by £15,000 in one year.
Patricia Garner, the governor who nominated the school, said: “Our pupils feel very strongly that they will inherit the world we leave them and they want a future that is sustainable and ethical.”
Judges said that “a never-ending succession of events and activities bear witness to Cardinal Wiseman’s commitment to all round education in sustainability.”
