Herefordshire’s children are changing their world

One hundred school children from thirty Herefordshire schools will join together in a huge annual awards ceremony at Hereford Town Hall on Wednesday July 1st.  The children will be celebrating the work they’ve done to make their world healthier, safer and more environmentally friendly.

There are four awards which will be presented by Dave Clasby from Sustrans, the sustainable transport charity. 

School Travel Plan awards which aim to reduce car traffic, cut congestion and improve safety outside the school gate.  Seven schools will receive certificates for developing new travel plans, which come with a government grant of approximately £5000 for a primary school and £10,000 for a high school.  In addition, eleven schools will receive first or second School Travel Achievement awards for progress on their school travel plans and one outstanding school, Whitchurch Primary, will receive a third School Travel Achievement award.

Eco-Schools is an international award programme that guides schools on their sustainable journey, providing a framework to help embed these principles into the heart of school life. Sixteen schools will receive their Bronze and Silver Eco School awards and four schools will be presented with the coveted Green Flag which is the highest level for an Eco School.

Healthy Schools is a government initiative in which schools have to address the issues of personal, social and health education, healthy eating, physical activity and emotional health and well-being in order to gain healthy schools status.  Four primary schools will receive their healthy school award (St Peter’s in Bromyard, Burley Gate, Ewyas Harold and St Paul’s CE in Hereford) taking the total to 84 schools with national Healthy Schools Status in Herefordshire.

Road Safety Awards Team The council has a road safety team who work with schools to make sure children understand some of the basic rules of road safety.  As a result of their work, the majority of primary schools have junior road safety officers so this year’s awards ceremony sees a new award for the best Junior Road Safety officer which goes to St Mary’s Primary School, Fownhope.

This year’s ceremony will be hosted for the third year running by Jamie Elliott, a student at Hereford Sixth Form College, with guest speaker, Dave Clasby from Sustrans talking about the national Bike-It campaign.  Spike the hedgehog will also be making a special appearance.

Presentations will be made by children from the following schools:

The Steiner Academy on developing their travel plan
Garway Primary School on their eco schools work
Whitchurch Primary School on school travel and being a sustainable school  
Whitchurch kids say walking and cycling to school is great.  It helps you exercise and stops you polluting the world.

Councillor Brian Wilcox, cabinet member for highways and transportation will be on hand to open the proceedings and Councillor Philip Price, cabinet member for ICT, education and achievement, will make the closing speech. 

Councillor Phillip Price said, “Herefordshire children are great champions when it comes to looking after the environment.  They care about the planet they live on and want to see some real changes to the way we adults look after the world – it’s their future after all.

“This awards ceremony celebrates some of the great work that our children and schools have been doing over the last year.  I’m particularly looking forward to hearing some of the children’s presentations about the projects they’ve been working on.”