Goldstone Primary School & Little Owls Nursery

A focus on sustainability is helping pupils reflect on environmental issues in an informed way.  Ofsted July 2023

Our City, Our World school mission statement

We strive for our school to be a happy and sustainable place for the Goldstone community, committing to providing a broad education encompassing green values in a safe, inclusive and supportive environment.

We teach our children positive life skills and we encourage them to become confident, resilient, creative thinkers who are ready for our changing world.

By educating our children and building their relationship with the natural environment we will inspire them to become change makers.

Our children are the future.

We have a strategy group that is overseeing how we can make Goldstone a more sustainable school across all areas- from our curriculum to our organisational practices and procurement. Please email raphaelaharris@goldstone.brighton-hove.sch.uk to get involved. 

Since receiving training in climate literacy and eco anxiety the staff have implemented many exciting projects in class and across the school including:

Launching on Friday 31^st March is our school refill shop, this will be taking place on the last Friday of the month after school - see below for further information.

In February our premises manager, Mick Munn, and our business manager, Jane Paynter, met with James Veness from Energy Sparks,  a tool that pinpoints when and how much energy the school is using. This has already enabled Mick to make small changes that will make us more energy efficient. 

Keep an eye out for news about a Goldstone bike train for children and their families to travel to school with!

Next term we will be focussing on BIODIVERSITY as our theme. As a school we will be having lots of exciting projects for our children to get involved with:

Making bug hotels.

Cordoning off areas of the school grounds to allow grass and wildflowers to grow.

Creating ash log habitats.

Greening our reception class playground.

Making trips to the Benfield Valley Project.

We are also asking families to be a part of the project. You will be receiving pings about pledges you can make at home that will have a big impact on our local environment, collectively we have the potential to make big changes!

Click here for further information.

Years 1 and 4 participated in workshops to create art work for the Kidical Mass bike ride taking place in Brighton on Sunday 28^th April. 

The children's artwork will be turned into flags to attach to participants' bikes on the day.

Kidical Mass is a worldwide movement that invites participants united by the vision that children and young people should be able to move around safely and independently on foot and by bike.

This term our sustainability focus is energy. The children are learning all about sustainable forms of energy, why fossil fuels are bad and how to save energy at home.

The eco committee have been busy helping our school to save energy. As well as photographing themselves showing how to save energy around Goldstone, they have been labelling switches with red, amber and green signs. If a switch is labelled green anyone can turn it off, amber only adults can and red it has to stay on. 

Later on in the term the whole school participated in a competition to design a sustainable school, hoping to win £1,500 to help make our school more energy efficient. See below for some of our fantastic entries!

We also invited Goldstone families to send in photographs of themselves saving energy at home.  Once again, see below for some great energy saving ideas!

Goldstone are thrilled to have been an awarded a distinction for their green flag renewal, the highest level of award. We are also really pleased with the feedback given to us by the eco schools assessors:

Your Eco-Committee was elected democratically, which is a fair and mature approach – well done to selected members on their appointment! It’s brilliant that your Y6 committee members were given responsibility for recording meeting minutes. This will allow them to take ownership over the Eco-Schools programme and develop their listening, communication and teamwork skills. Terrific work! We’re pleased that carrying out your Environmental Review helped your committee to take stock of both its progress and areas for future action, whilst highlighting the fantastic work that your school had already done to improve your school grounds. What really stood out here is how you invited input into your review from various school stakeholders, such as teachers and your Art Coordinator and Premises Manager. This demonstrates a cooperative mindset and will help to engage others in your Eco-Schools work. The projects outlined in your Action Plan, such as litter-picks and school-wide competitions, demonstrate your Eco-Committee’s inclusive approach in carefully considering how it can involve the whole school in its planned Eco-Schools’ activities. Hats off to you all for tackling areas where you scored lowest in the Environmental Review, which is testament to a confident and ambitious Eco-Committee!

It’s clear that you have embedded environmental topics into your curriculum with great enthusiasm and these issues are being used to enrich learning in your school, whilst engaging your pupils in important issues, such single-use plastics and their impact on marine habitats. We love how you are using your outdoor spaces and resources, such as your Forest School, as vehicles to engage your young people with the natural world, whilst teaching them how to look after both themselves and the environment through creative play. Your Eco-Committee has made diligent and consistent efforts to keep both the school and wider community up-to-date on its progress and achievements using myriad verbal and digital methods. We were equally impressed with the extent of your involvement with numerous individuals and organisations, relying on their expertise and passion to enrich and inform your Eco-Schools journey. No doubt this was a mutually beneficial experience for all, as these individuals and organisations must have also been inspired by your dedicated Eco-Committee.

Everyone involved should take great pride in the wonderful parent quote – you have gone above and beyond to unite pupils, family, staff and the wider community to a common cause and have given your young people a platform for tackling issues that they are passionate about. It has been an absolute pleasure to read through your application. You are a wonderful ambassador for the Eco-Schools programme and we are delighted to award you an Eco-Schools Green Flag with Distinction – congratulations!

Goldstone Squeaky Green is an eco-refill shop set up to help our community access affordable, ecologically friendly household essentials whilst also reducing the plastic wastage we create from these products. The shop was set up under the Pupils Profit program and we are lucky to be one of just four flagship schools taking part in this venture. The shop itself is run by the pupils, who manage everything including liaising with the community, purchasing products, managing finances and, of course, running the shop themselves. The shop runs on the last Friday of each month and as the shop's revenue grows more products will become available.

Click here to see further information on the Brighton and Hove City Council website.

This term we have already had a visit from Paul Turner from Sustrand who spent a day with years 4 and 5 anaysing lichen around the school grounds to find out about air quality around our school. He has also put up a number of air quality tubes around the school which will help determine how poor the air quality is near the road, the results of which we should have by the end of November.

As part of the Our City, Our World project Goldstone is participating in No Mow May - you may have noticed the grass and wildflowers growing tall around the stone at the front of the school. 

This week we had a visit from some Brighton University Ecology students to survey our No Mow May patch . The students counted the number and noted the species of plants and wildlife in our patch. They plan to return in June to resurvey again to compare how much more biodiverse the space has become, we will share the results in the newsletter. 

We have invited the whole school community- staff and families- to join in with No Mow May this year. Please send your photographs of your No Mow May space to raphaelaharris@goldstone.brighton-hove.sch.uk. I will create a photo page of our No Mow May spaces for the website and make a calculation of how much space our school community have given to wildlife over the month of May. 

Let's make a change for the better together!

Thanks to the generous donation of many of our families, we are proud to announce that Goldstone now sponsors 5 acres of rainforest in Ecuador, South America..  This area is located within the Tropical Andes biodiversity hotspot, one of the most biologically diverse area of land on planet Earth.  It contains hundreds of species of tree and is home to many amazing and threatened species.  These include the spectacled bear, puma and ocelot, as well as recently discovered species such as the unusually named 'confusing rocket frog' and the olinguito, a member of the racoon family.

This week of 20th-26th September is Green Week, which is all about raising awareness around green issues and particularly the COP26 (The UN conference for world leaders about climate change). Goldstone eco committee were very excited to have WWF visit them and run a workshop about climate change. They learnt all about how children can be empowered to make a change and have influence on those making big decisions.

They each made a leaf saying a promise they have made in order to affect climate change and something they want a world leader to do. Excitingly, our leaves will be put on a WWF tree at COP26 where they may be read by the likes of Boris Johnson or Joe Biden! Our eco committee were really inspired so watch this space for campaigns and ideas! 

In June this year Goldstone Primary School was thrilled to pass their Eco Schools assessment and be awarded the green flag for a second time. This means that we are officially a green flag school until summer 2023 when we will be assessed again.

Many congratulations to the eco committee for all of their hard work that has won them this recognition!

September 2021

Children from Goldstone school have been asked to make a contribution to a heads' conference in Brighton and Hove taking place in March 2021. They have been filmed talking about what their vision is for a sustainable/ eco school of the future. 

Here are some pictures of Year 6 children helping to pull up a felled tree from the pond area. We're tidying up the space so it can be used by everyone in the school as one of our eco objectives in the garden. The tadpoles seemed non-plussed by the excitement, but we are sure that the FrOGS, who help fund our wonderful school gardener Ruth, will be hopping about with excitement! A special mention also goes to Ruth's Dad Simon, who as a volunteer, has donated hours of his time and expertise to the garden with Ruth this term - it's fantastic to have you on board Simon!

May 2021

The eco committee have been doing regular litter picks around the school grounds. They have made an inventory of the litter they found in one lunchtime and created an owl out of litter to raise children's awareness of how much litter is dropped!

Who drops Litter? A Twit-Twoo!

June 2021