A PRIMARY school in Holywell has achieved a top international honour for environmental work.

Ysgol Maes-Y-Felin, off Penymaes Road, have secured their platinum eco award from the eco-schools programme run by Keep Wales Tidy and funded by the Welsh Government.

Mrs Tamsin Nellist, a Year One and Two class teacher at the school, said: “The assessors were impressed with all the hard work that we do as a school and our commitment to protect the environment.”

The eco-school system offers three tiers of award – bronze, silver and green flag. The first two levels are self-assessed and involve a school setting up to tackle any environmental work such as forming an eco-committee, developing an action plan and linking the work to the current curriculum.

For a school to gain their green flag, an Eco-Schools Assessor will visit and to check whether they have met the award criteria that includes

Eco-schools are required to renew their green flag award every two years and, upon gaining their fourth green flag award, the school achieves platinum status – which the charity say demonstrates the school’s ‘long-term commitment to environmental education’.

Once a school has achieved platinum status, an online annual renewal application must be submitted.

Data from Keep Wales Tidy show that, at the end of 2018, the number of schools granted the platinum award in North Wales stand at 45 but a spokesman confirms this may have risen beyond 50 since the start of the year.

Following on from the achievement, the class have launched a new topic for the commencing term seeking local businesses in Holywell to pledge to cut their waste, be eco-friendlier and offer them help to put these measures in place.

Mrs Nellist said: “We are keen to show them that the children’s voices can drive change so any contacts of interesting collaboration work based around minimising plastic use would be much appreciated.

“Our aim is to work with a local business, have some of the children go in and assess their waste and plastic use currently and then work with the business to create an action plan and put systems in place to minimise this, hopefully including lots of maths and numeracy so generating charts and graphs to support the children’s learning.”

If any businesses in Holywell are seeking to become more environmentally-friendly and would be interested in helping the class with this project, please contact the school on 01352 711366.