We, at Rush National School, have been a ‘Green School’ since 2005. Over that time we have achieved many Green Flags by successfully achieving the criteria laid down by An Taisce. This is a school and community-wide project. We strongly encourage the sentiment of ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’.
The children are encouraged to use reusable lunch and drinks containers. We have paper bins in every classroom, do daily yard litter pickups, implement a ‘turn off the tap’ policy etc. We have a biannual ‘Cash for Clobber’ collection which is always a huge success. This raises much needed funds for the school and supports the National Council for the Blind in Ireland (NCBI).
The garden at the front of the school is planted by our pupils and our caretaker, Julian, helps us to maintain it. We also have 16 garden allotments within the school. In this area, we have a sensory garden and classes get the opportunity to ‘manage’ an allotment; plant bulbs, seeds and vegetables, maintain their area and see, at first hand, their produce grow to cook, taste and eat.
We were also the only school in all of Fingal to have pupils acting as after-school traffic wardens – a very sought-after role by the children! We encourage our pupils to cycle, scoot and walk to school as much as possible. We run an annual cycle safety course for the children of 5th class. We have plenty of storage areas around the school for children to park their modes of transport. Parents are encouraged to use the local church car park to drop and collect the children. This also helps to reduce the traffic in front of the school at peak times, making it a safer space for all.
