Overview Windmill Primary School in Headington, Oxford, ran a Switch Off Campaign in November 2014. They involved the whole school; pupils, teachers, non-teaching staff and parents. During the course of their Switch Off week they saved 5% of their electricity usage and 3% of their gas usage purely by changing the behaviour of their staff and pupils.
Forming the action group The campaign started with a group of 5 parents with professional expertise in energy and an interest in helping the school save energy formed an action group. The group started to monitor the school’s electricity and gas usage using www.stark.co.uk. They attended a governors meeting to discuss what action could be taken to reduce energy usage in the school.
As a result of the governors meeting, a member of the teaching staff was identified to work with the parent group and Headteacher to run the energy campaign (Switch Off Week). The week was planned for the end of November, when the school had heavy usage of both lighting and heating. The week prior to the switch off was planned as a monitoring week, to act as a baseline to compare the switch off week’s usage to.
The school have a well-established eco-committee which consists of 30 pupils from across the school and is run by the Headteacher. The eco-committee also met and discussed actions they could take to reduce energy.
Actions Between the adult and pupil action groups, the school decided on the following action:
- Thermometers were given to each class and temperatures kept to 21C using radiator valves.
- Children were taught about putting extra clothing on rather than turning up the thermostat.
- Unnecessary electrical items were switched off.
- Everyone was encouraged to keep doors were closed.
A point was made that it had to be ‘business as usual’ and the campaign was about reducing the wasteful usage of electricity.
During the week children were chosen to take meter readings from the school’s 5 energy meters and the eco group made posters to encourage staff and pupils to close doors, to switch off electrical items when not in use and to monitor their classroom temperature and keep it at 21C.
Communicating the campaign to staff The parent group ran a meeting with the teachers prior to the campaign to discuss how to fit energy into teaching. As energy is not in the primary curriculum, cross curricular links were made and teachers were able to teach off curriculum for the week.
Learning about energy During the Switch Off Week, the following learning took place:
- Year 1 – turning off appliances and making posters
- Year 2 – literacy and non-chronological reports on energy
- Year 3 – where energy comes from
- Year 4 – how electricity is used and is it possible to prioritise usage in order of importance?
- Year 4 – how many joules people use during exercise
- Year 5 – adverts about energy reduction, with other schools as the audience
- Year 6 – an estate agent spoke to the year group about energy rating in housing and the pupils considered materials and their properties used in insulation.
- Upper KS2 pupils also used a thermal imaging camera to look at insulation and where their school was losing heat.
Homework was set for all children asking them to find their gas and electricity meter at home, monitor their usage in the first week, and then try to make a reduction in the second week.
An assembly was held prior to the week to tell pupils what was going on, and also afterwards to share what all the children had learned and so the headteacher could feed back how much energy had been saved.
Communicating to the wider school community The parent group set up a website windmillschoolenergy.weebly.com to communicate what they were doing to other parent and teachers. A flyer was also left in the school reception advertising the energy campaign to anyone coming into the school. The school newsletter included information about the energy campaign for parents.