Tenbury Primary Academy
Courageous Advocacy at Tenbury Primary Academy
At Tenbury we give opportunities for all pupils to show Courageous Advocacy and to understand how they can challenge injustice. Our school motto is ‘Therefore encourage one another and build each other up’, which extends beyond our school into the local community and even globally, ensuring many of our pupils are keen to engage in social action.
We have a thriving band of pupil ‘Eco-Warriors’ who are working hard to make our school site more environmentally friendly and encourage everyone in our community to look after our world. They have cut our landfill waste by half by introducing recycling bins around school and making posters to encourage everyone to join in. We now recycle as much as possible including paper, plastics, glass, bottle tops, crisp packets, tea bags, fruit waste and batteries! We also have ‘Power Down Champions’ in every class, who are responsible for turning lights off when the classroom is empty and turning projectors off at the end of the school day. Our Eco-committee have been busy planting wild flower seeds, as we try to re-wild some areas of the school site to attract more bees and butterflies. We also have Eco monitors who take readings from our weather station every day, so that we can do lots of maths, work out averages and see if we can see differences in temperature and rainfall over time!
Our local MP, Harriet Baldwin, visited school to find out our children’s views on climate change and how we can care for our world. Our children were able to ask some very challenging questions, especially around the infrequency of local bus services!
To help improve our local community, our children have chosen to be part of the Malvern Hills Council ‘Adopt A Street’ scheme. This means we have committed to go out litter picking in the community at least three times a year. Our Eco Warriors also litter pick around our school site regularly. As we have our school dog, Rosie, our pupils have also joined the Malvern Hills ‘Green Dog Walking Scheme’, where we pledge to always carry poo bags on a dog walk and will give them to other dog owners if they need them too!
We also have a link with Maramba, a Primary School in Tanzania and our pupils in Tenbury and the children in Tanzania have been looking at the Global Goals together. We are all working on gardening projects to improve our environment and have a go at growing our own food, both here and in Tanzania. Our pupils have also raised money for our partner school to help with gardening equipment and water irrigation.
Our school choir are always keen to support our local community and beyond, singing at lots of events locally such as Tenbury Applefest , The Christmas Fayre and also singing at the Three Counties Show. Last Christmas our choir went ‘on tour’ around three local care homes and made a huge difference to the residents – really making it a day to remember!
Our children are keen to stand up for what they believe in and make a difference. They are confident enough to suggest their own charities for us to raise money for and plan their own ways of fundraising, such as the non-school uniform day they held for the victims of the Turkey and Syria earthquake and the annual ‘Plant a Tree Day’ that we now take part in after our pupils suggested it.
We would recommend that everyone gets out there and plays their part, no matter how small it may seem, as we have shown that by working together, we can influence real change!