Green Flag

12th May 2020

Hi everyone,

I am delighted to announce that we have been awarded our fourth Green Flag for the theme of Travel. We have spent the last two school years working hard on this theme with lots of help from Ellen O' Sullivan of An Taisce. This was a challenging theme for us as a school because of our rural setting, but we accepted the challenge and our Green Schools committee did trojan work in helping us achieve our goal. Unfortunately, because all schools are closed at the moment, the usual awards ceremony in May will not take place this year. Hopefully we will be able to have a flag-raising ceremony some time in the next school year. As Green School's Co-Ordinator, I would personally like to thank all the members of my Green School's committee for all their hard work for this flag and previous flags. They have completed all tasks asked of them without complaint and with lots of enthusiasm. I hope the graduating 6th class members of our team will be able to call back for the flag-raising ceremony in the Autumn. I would also like to thank Ellen O' Sullivan for all her help over the last two years. As for the parents and students of the school, I would like to remind you all of the main message from our Travel theme "Save fuel - CARPOOL!!" Please keep this in mind for the new school year. It is an ongoing issue for our us, so please make a big effort to help us reduce the traffic congestion outside the school.

Regards, Audrey O' Sullivan

In Ballyhass NS we already have three green flags for Litter and Waste, Energy and Water.

We are currently working towards the fourth flag for Travel. The aim of the Travel theme is to encourage students ans parents to walk, cycle, scoot, Park 'n' Stride, use public transport or carpool instead of using private cars on the school run.

As part of our Action Plan for our Travel Flag, our Green Flag committee carried out a Walkability Audit with the help of Fiona Barry from An Taisce. A Walkability Audit is as audit of the pedestrian routes to school. This involves walking the routes to school and making notes of what is good or bad about a particular area ie road surfaces, availability of footpaths, road signage. The results of our audit are displayed in the link below.

Walkability Audit

Travel Survey

We recently carried out a travel survey to establish how the children travel to school each day. We discovered that a staggering 77.6% of our pupils travel to school daily by private car. We then decided to look more closely at how we could cut down the number of cars outside the school each morning and afternoon. A further survey informed us that 45% of the cars coming to the school each day contain just one student, while a further 40% contain two students. In consultation with Ellen O'Sullivan from An Taisce, our focus going forward with the travel theme will be to promote car-pooling where possible. The results of the two surveys carried out are displayed below.

Travel Survey

As part of both our Active flag and our Green Flag we recently walked to Ballyhass Lakes to complete the run-offs for Cork City Sports which takes place on May 30th.

Travelling by Car to Ballyhass N.S.

We all enjoyed our afternoon at Ballyhass Lakes.

On Thursday April 4th, the Green Flag committee carried out our National Spring Clean day. We collected rubbish from the school yard, pitch and courtyards. Children from the senior classes then collected up the rubbish from the ditches and roadsides closest to the school. We like to keep the school and it's surroundings looking well. We will be carrying out another yard clean-up following our annual May Fayre, which takes place on May 12th. Photos of our Spring Clean day are posted below.

Our Green Flag committee

Cleaning our school yard

Working hard

Teamwork!!

The winning entry from our recent poster competition held to promote carpooling. The poster was created by Fuchsia O' Driscoll (3rd class). The competition was judged by Ellen O' Sullivan from An Taisce.

Competition winner, Fuchsia O' Driscoll, being presented with her prize by Neil Taylor 9 Junior Infants). Fuchsia won a voucher for the Ballyhass Lakes activity centre, sponsored by Ballyhass Lakes.