PUPILS at Cliff Lane Primary School have temporarily put aside their textbooks and calculators to make way for eco codes and environmental action plans.

PUPILS at Cliff Lane Primary School have temporarily put aside their textbooks and calculators to make way for eco codes and environmental action plans.

Students at the school in Ipswich have been working towards achieving a silver Eco-Schools award by reducing their environmental impact on the community.

The children and staff have already received a bronze award from ENCAMS, the charity which runs the Keep Britain Tidy campaign and now have the opportunity to apply for funding to help them progress towards the prestigious Green Flag.

Top of the agenda is the transformation of the school wildlife area which is in desperate need of a clean up.

Dennis Kell, Year six teacher, said:

“The children have been redesigning the wildlife area and have been involved in making a plan of how to redevelop it with a view to obtaining funds to make it somewhere we can use as an outdoor classroom.”

The entire school has been involved in the programme with each year group tackling a specific area of environmental concern.

As well as the hard work put in by Year six students, there were some fun activities for the children to enjoy including a chance to recycle paper and make a scale model of the wildlife area.

Ellie Lusher, 11, who is part of the editorial team for the project, said:

“The wildlife area is getting really bad so we've made a proposal to try and get some money to improve it. There is a pond out there but it's dirty and the pond line is broken so we can't put any wildlife in it. We're hoping to make it a good habitat for all sorts of animals so we can use it for pond dipping and bird watching.”