Litter at Sprowston Community High School

As a school we are committed to ensuring that we offer our students the highest possible educational experience. This commitment also includes ensuring the physical environment is of the best quality. One area where we feel we could improve in this respect, is how we tackle the problem of litter.

As a large school we do experience a noticeable issue with dropped packaging and discarded waste, particularly after break and lunch time. We have decided to combat this with a new programme of sanctions and rewards from January 2010.

Our 2010 Litter Strategy

Zones of Responsibility – Each Year group in Key stage 3 will be given an area to take responsibility for. The success of that year group in improving the litter situation in that zone will determine whether they receive a termly year group prize.

Community Service Awards – Students will have the opportunity to earn new “ECO” points by volunteering to spend 10 minutes of their time litter picking or collecting waste material such as recycled paper. Students who are able to collect 30 or more eco points in a term will be entered in a prize draw for a Nintendo DSI games console.

In addition to these incentives we will be taking a more robust approach to the minority of students who are irresponsible in the way they dispose of their litter. Students who are reported for littering will be placed in a 30 minute “Community Service” detention on a Thursday. This detention will be spent collecting litter under the supervision of a member of the school leadership team. Appropriate gloves and bags will be provided for this task.

Students who fail to attend Community Service will receive a day of School Centred Fixed Term Exclusion. Parents will be informed by letter if their child is to be placed on Community Service, but we will be unable to offer “alternative” punishments.

We would like to ask for your support in talking to your child about our Litter strategy and particularly about their joint responsibility for keeping our school clean and free of litter. We believe that all students share the responsibility for clearing away litter and we ask that you join with us in ensuring all students actively collect and appropriately deposit any litter they find in the school. Staff have been specifically asked to challenge students about the litter in the school and students will be expected to pick up litter that is around them regardless of whether they are personally responsible for its presence. Only in this way can we meaningfully teach our students about joint responsibility.

As we hope you can see, we have spent a considerable amount of time planning the most appropriate way to tackle this issue. We hope you will join us in teaching our students about the importance of a clean and safe environment.

Mr D Reynolds
Deputy Headteacher