(Photo gallery at the bottom.)

I still can’t quite believe that Blue Peter came to the school yesterday!

It all started a few years ago when the school became a ‘Beach Rep’ for the Surfers Against Sewage – the first and only School Rep with our School Council / Eco Council being the representatives.

The charity soon developed a program called Plastic Free Schools and we were at the launch of this at Pickwell Manor. This was all around the same time as Blue Planet 2 was aired, and there was a huge groundswell of support in our community. Everyone supported our school, none more so than Keri, our kitchen manager, to help us become the UK’s first Plastic Free School.

One of our children, Jasper, had the great idea of writing to Blue Peter about our award. After Jasper received his green badge, he had the ambitious idea of encouraging his class to do the same… but we took it a little bit further and got the whole school to draw pictures, make posters and write poems and letters explaining what we done, culminating with most of the school receiving a green or blue badge!

Jasper, his mum and myself then got in touch and suggested how it would be lovely if they come over and see what we were doing in the school. We were absolutely thrilled (although a little bit nervous – and the children, terribly excited) that they said yes and agreed to come visit us!

So, BOTH presenters spent the whole day filming about our green and eco credentials, asking the children to explain what we were doing and of course, getting involved too.

The programme is airing on the 1st of August with half the programme looking at the Eden Project and half the program looking at our Green School.

Blue Peter badges are considered quite a commodity and only a very small handful were issued on the day, to those who helped Sandrea with her art work. We know of several children who haven’t got a green badge, weren’t sent them or have one damaged or lost … so before we break up, we’re going to get children to write or make posters and see if they can get their green badge through the proper channels.

We also found out the purple badge is issued if you review one of their programs! So that’s what we’re going to do in September; review the program from both sides of the camera and see if we can get a school load or purple badges next!

Do enjoy the photos and remember the time that Blue Peter came to Georgeham School!