Newham Primary School is working hard to educate and improve its sustainability through leadership groups and ongoing projects.
The small school has a range of sustainability projects for students to learn about the Macedon Ranges and how they can be more sustainable including an ecology talk, whole school tree planting days and a river detectives program.
Principal Simone Wood said sustainability has been an important aspect of the school for a long time.
“We’ve developed a junior sustainability leadership group … [where] they’ve made videos to teach other students how best to do composting and recycling.
“Sustainability has been instisic in getting some of the grants and extending our sustainability programs.”
Ms Wood said the schools focus on sustainability and nature is impacted by its location in the Macedon Ranges.
“Being on the creek we’ve had kolas, echidnas, snakes [and] kangaroos near the school,” she said.
“A lot of the children are coming from big backyards or small acreages [and] they’re living the same experiences.”
“Learning with us about sustainability [is something] they can take back home.”
One of the school’s upcoming projects is a planting day in May, where staff and students will plant hundreds of trees.
“We’ve been allocated by Melbourne Water about 300 trees, but we need to figure out the best planting pattern,” Ms Wood said.
“The children are going to be learning about where we can [plant, as we] can’t just start planting stuff [anywhere].”
Zoe Moffatt
