St Patrick’s Primary: Guardians of Port Fairy’s Beaches

St Patrick’s Primary School’s dedication to sustainability is as solid as its commitment to the community. And this passionate commitment was recently recognised with a Community Leadership Award in the 2024 ResourceSmart School Awards.

St Patrick’s recently became a 5 Star school. It has previously been a ResourceSmart Schools Awards finalist several times, including in 2023 for School of the Year. Sustainability and ResourceSmart Schools are so embedded in almost every aspect of school life that an astounding 94 of the school’s 180 students are part of the sustainability action team!

'Having half the school want to be a part of the Sustainability Team just shows how important it is for their wellbeing and how important it is for their school engagement,' says teacher Benson Steere.

'I truly believe the wellbeing of the kids is being positively affected by all these sustainability initiatives that we're doing in the school,' says Benson. The school also benefits financially from the sustainability measures it’s taking. It’s saved $752,971 in energy and water resources since starting the program in 2008.

'Teachers are always busy. But we’re doing all this work (towards sustainability) and look at how much we’re saving,' says Benson.

ResourceSmart Schools supports teachers

At St Patrick’s its ResourceSmart Schools facilitator plays a big role in helping Benson integrate the program into classes and school activities. ‘They're always checking in,’ says Benson. “I definitely recommend the program, just for the support and the direction they give.”

Benson says that although it sounds counter-intuitive, not getting hung up on attaining stars in the ResourceSmart Schools program has been important to St Patrick’s success.

He recommends getting the basic sustainability practices in place and then allowing the stars to come to you. ‘Once you’ve got the practices embedded and the children involved, when you go to do your stars, it's going to be easy,’ says Benson.

That said, he knows that being recognised through stars progression is good for the school, teacher’s and student’s morale. ‘I think it’s important that schools get recognition for sustainable practices because [when we attained 5 stars] we were on the ABC radio talking about our school.’

Student wellbeing

Each term the school has a Sustainability Day that focuses on one of its focus areas: waste, water, energy and biodiversity. These reflect the ResourceSmart Schools modules. The days are led by the student leadership team. They plan and run activities such as a whole school waste audits, analysing the school water data, planting trees and veggies to enhance biodiversity, and coordinating each classroom to participate in energy-free activities during Earth Hour.

Students also came up with the idea to raffle off the produce they grow in their school garden. Each week students sell tickets. The winner wins a basket full of fresh veggies, herbs and fruit, and the money raised goes back into producing more veggies.

'The kids love it,' says Benson.

Parents have noticed how much their children are enjoying being outside as part of the ResourceSmart Schools program, and the impact on their engagement at school. 'When kids get a different element to make them enjoy school (such as being outside), it’s going to benefit the maths, the literacy, the science, everything else they’re doing,' says Benson.

Sustainability as part of the curriculum

By integrating the ResourceSmart Schools program into school life Benson makes sure the students are participating in sustainability activities regularly. Although it took some effort at the beginning, Benson says that they are, ‘now at that stage where it's really ingrained in our school.’

Year 5 and 6 students support the Port Fairy Coastal Group by recording and monitoring data on erosion levels at two local beaches. The collected data is used in literacy and numeracy classroom activities, and the findings are reported to the community.

‘From that data [the coastal group] made a rock wall to support the dunes there, and they pretty much saved that beach. [The students] are working with a laser level to measure the dunes and it's really hands on, which is great for the kids because they get to be a part of it.’

Growing community connections

For one of the school’s water-focused sustainability days it connected with Wannon Water for activities for the students. And a local biodiversity expert from the community took students outside to talk about the flora and fauna of the local area on a biodiversity day.

’Because we’re in Port Fairy and it’s a small community, we’ve always got people who can come in and do that,” says Benson. These connections make it easier to use the ResourceSmart Schools modules as part of the curriculum and engage the community outside of the school.

St Patrick’s also donates surplus food from its gardens to ‘Food Share’ in Warrnambool. They visit a local farm, Volcano Produce in Warrnambool, to help pick leftover veggies that are then also donated to Food Share.

’I think that's important because you're surrounded by like-minded people that inspire you to keep going where you can so easily, as a teacher, lose that motivation because we are so busy,’ says Benson.

The schools’ principal Olga Lyons added that, ’It’s critical to the success of the program to have a key person like Benson in the school, who is passionate about teaching young people about the importance of sustainable practices’.