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Geography students at Bedales School participate in an apprentice style sustainability project

As the familiar sounds of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet pours out of the speaker, you’ll be forgiven for not knowing the song's title, but its modern day association with Sir Alan Sugar and ‘You're Fired!’ is one that is not easily missed!

Over the last five weeks, Block 3 geography students have themselves turned into the Bedales Young Apprentices to work up some new ideas on how Bedales can become more sustainable.  After the introduction of the Apprentice style task last year, our current block 3 students have run with the idea and have produced some outstanding work which we hope to present back to the powers that be.

Regularly featured in the media, our understanding of sustainability continues to grow and many students are seeing it in their own homes with the development of eco-housing, solar panels and recycling.  Until now the main restricting factors behind sustainability within a school is largely down to education, awareness and willingness of participants.

The idea of ‘The Apprentice’ task is focussed on necessity and the increasing cost of living.  As fuel prices continue to rise our self-sufficiency, environmental awareness and overall sustainability are called to question.  Bedales site is not on mains gas, and so has the pricey task of regularly refilling oil and gas tanks for both school and domestic buildings across the site.  Not only that, but as a school we produce a great deal of waste both recyclable or compostable – so the students in groups of up to 5 have been devising projects and campaigns to change the way we do things here.  We want the drive to start with Block 3 and subsequently allow them to push their ideas out across the other years.

Student ideas this year have ranged from the introduction of custom made turbines along the roof of the Orchard Building, wider use of detector lights in many buildings, reducing the amount of paper waste and ultimately creating a more sustainable approach to living. 

Many of the students approached companies for information regarding costs of introducing wood chip boilers, appropriate sizing and costing of solar panels and even to the extent of getting a trade quote for a set of ‘eco-buttons’ to conserve energy on a daily basis in computer rooms.

The initiative and style of many of the presentations completed by our students has been inspiring.  The students didn’t stop at simple internet research; they have photographed the site, gauged the opinion on site and called in our supplies and accounts staff to find out current practice. View the students ideas here.

By Kirsty Layton
Head of Geography

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