New Eco-Schools Wales resource explains how to use SHRN data to support lessons on environmental topics
Eco-Schools is a global programme engaging 19.5 million children across 70 countries. Run in Wales by Keep Wales Tidy, the programme is designed to empower and inspire young people to make positive environmental changes to their school and wider community, while developing their skills.
Eco-Schools Wales has published a free resource which outlines how to use School Health Research Network (SHRN) data to support the monitoring and evaluation of eco-friendly actions. Suggestions include:
- ‘Reduce climate impact by increasing active travel, then using the active travel data gathered by SHRN for the school report to measure that impact.’
- ‘Establish baseline actions for your school by linking data from the environmental review and the SHRN report. You can then carry out your actions and compare the data, remembering that year groups will have moved two years.’
- ”Your (SHRN) report can be used as a discussion point with staff and students about possible areas to cover.‘
Fran Watkin, Education Officer at Keep Wales Tidy, summarised SHRN’s impact on this project: ‘SHRN data is a really valuable tool that can help students understand the impact of their actions. This may prompt students to implement a sustainable change within their school setting. For example, providing quantitative data on the number of students actively traveling to school, or the number of students who are eating fruit and vegetables leading to further calculations of food miles. The data from SHRN provides a great baseline as well as providing comparison data due to the longitudinal nature of the SHRN data collection.’
Fran sees the potential of SHRN data embedding itself in the eco monitoring process: ‘It would be great to see more schools using the rich data available in the SHRN survey to monitor Eco-Schools work. It could also be used to establish a baseline for particular areas for development. We look forward to exploring these results in future eco projects.’
The Eco-Schools Wales resources can be accessed here: PDF
Read more about Eco-Schools here: bit.ly/3TWfgxB
And more about Keep Wales Tidy here: bit.ly/3FyX2hd