Heswall Primary School was the decisive winner at this year’s Better Energy School Awards!
The school participated in confederation with five schools, their project, ‘Extinction is Forever’ is the name of a film that highlights the problems faced by endangered species across the planet. The video is part of the series ‘Wirral Science Under the Stars 2019’, and was shown on a giant screen to over 1,000 spectators! Each regional finalist won £1,000. Heswall Primary School was awarded the top prize of £5,000!
As part of its commitment to promoting excellence in environmental education, Total has been sponsoring Better Energy Awards for the past 12 years, previously known as Total Green School. The Awards are organised in conjunction with the Young People’s Trust for the Environment (YPTE).
Each year, participating schools go through a regional elimination process leading up to the Better Energy School Awards National Award Ceremony. There already have been over 250,000 projects submitted nationally!
New CSR partnership will see Total increase its impact on environmental education nationally
This month, Total has strengthened its commitment to the environment by launching a UK-wide partnership with YTPE by providing free online lesson plans for all UK primary school teachers. The lesson plans will enable primary school teachers to deliver a wide range of topics on issues applicable to all curriculums, and provide much-needed resources to teachers under pressure to produce high-quality lessons on environmental issues, but lack the time and the often necessary expertise to do so.
Since setting up One Total: One Country in the UK, we have been looking for ways to create a national CSR project. A national project would be active across the UK rather than only where we have operations. This would allow us to have more of an impact and involve more of our stakeholders in communicating Total’s values and contribution to the UK.
After consultation with teachers and professional educators, we learned that there was a real demand for primary school lesson plans in the area of science. The free-to-download lesson plans are put together by an expert teacher and are meticulously checked before release. YPTE resources have already received frequent recommendations from the Department for Education. The online lesson plans will also be supported by Google who will ensure the YPTE website appears on the first page of results for relevant searches.
Mike Sangster, UK Chair for Total said, “It’s important that we show our stakeholders the contribution we make to the UK. Of course, we make a significant impact already through the energy we provide, the highly-skilled jobs we create and the supply chain we support. But we need to show the part we play in society as well and I think this new partnership will help us do that. In its first year, we’ve set a target of reaching 1,000,000 school children with this initiative and I look forward to seeing it grow.”
