Kinsale school recognised

The Board of Cork Environmental Forum (CEF) has chosen to recognise the work of Kinsale Community School at the Cork Environmental Forum Awards with their annual Public Sector Environmental Award.

This award is for integrating education for sustainable development into the school curriculum. Students, staff and management have taken huge steps in recent years to reduce the school’s environmental impact and its overall carbon footprint.

Sustainable development themes are now part and parcel of every subject right across the curriculum.

Principal Fergal McCarthy said: “It is a great privilege for Kinsale Community School to be in receipt of the very prestigious Cork Environmental Forum Award in recognition of our initiatives which are targeted to support our environment and to create an even greater awareness of the challenges relating to climate change, bio-diversity and global citizenship.

“We have sought to integrate the principles of sustainability into our curriculum through the mapping of the sustainable development goals to learning outcomes as envisioned by the reformed Junior Cycle. Our success has been achieved through a whole school community approach.”

There are numerous extracurricular activities and projects taking place at the school. It received its first Green Flag Award this year on the topic of waste driven by the diligent Green Team, solar panels have been installed on the roof which feed into the electricity grid while rainwater is harvested from the roof to be used in the toilets.

There is also wildflower areas are planted to attract pollinators and increase biodiversity, a newly built greenhouse will be used for growing organic food, water fountains have been installed to encourage refilling of water bottles and to reduce single use plastics as well as reducing paper use by approximately 34 per cent between 2020 and 2021.

Art students created a large wave made from plastic bottles with the slogan ‘Wave goodbye to plastic’ to encourage students to go ‘reusable’ and a number of fifth year students reached the Grand Final of the Junk Kouture competition.

Kinsale Community School also has no less than seven entries to the BT Young Scientist Competition that are on themes related to sustainability.

Kinsale Community School has a newly appointed sustainability chaplain. Klaus Harvey is teaching Eco-Unesco’s Youth for Sustainable Development to transition year students.

He said: “Kinsale Community School is to be congratulated on winning CEF’s annual award for the Public Sector and it is well deserved. Since I arrived here as sustainability chaplain three months ago, I have been hugely impressed and inspired by what the school has already achieved in terms of reducing its environmental impact and improving its sustainability. For me it is an absolute privilege and pleasure to be involved in contributing to this ongoing work, seeing students become empowered, active global citizens.”