• Evidence of existing engagement with sustainable education within the school such as garden area, recycling bins, litter picking ‘wardens’, bird boxes, and so on.

– When searching for evidence of engagement with sustainable education in my placement school, I often had to go searching instead of this evidence being obvious. The first piece of evidence that I observed were the lack of bins in the playground. For the whole school, there were only 2bins outside and the school did not have designated litter pickers. There we no bird boxes as the school is situated in the middle of a housing estate and so has no naturally placed trees. The school is largely concrete which the children play on, aside from a grass area up the back of the playground which children tend not to play on. There is a garden, however, it is out of bounds as the weeds and nettles have become unmaintainble and harmful to the children.

• Consideration of actual play space for children and its suitability.

-Again, because of the situation of the school – in the middle of a housing estate  – the school is lacking in in a lot of greenery. A large proportion of the playground is concrete however the school have had games printed on it to do their best considering what they have. The grass area at the back is well kept however it has no games or materials for the children to play with.

• Discussion with children on these aspects of sustainable education.

-Upon speaking to the children, I observed how unhappy they are with their playground. One child was even stung by a nettle because of the unruly bushes. They told me that there are no designated litter pickers and that they would be interested in doing their bit to help. A group of primary 5 girls even told me that they think a great idea would be to designate a year group a month to do litter pics and make it  competition. I think this is a great idea as it would allow children to take pride in their playground and work hard to gain a reward. They also told me that they wish the school would invest in a climbing frame or assault course so they could play in the grass more.

 1 – Bin 1

2- Bin 2

3 – Mainly used play area which is concrete

4- Grass field

5 – Overgrown garden area

6- Carpark

7- Entrance to school

Note school is situated in amongst a housing estate.