Food and the Environment Case Study

Stirling High School is a Public Private Parternership school and we were lucky enough to have the full support of all involved in PPP. The mapping out of the Poly Tunnel site involved some of our maths classes. The tunnel was erected by the Prudential as a corporate project. Funding from the local community and Sons of the Rock enables us to buy class sets of aprons, wellies and tools for pupils. Raised beds were constructed inside and outside the polytunnel. This was completed by BTCV, pupils, staff and local community. It was officially opened by David Cameron, the then Head of Children's services.

In order to make our crops accessible to the whole school we had consultations with staff and pupils which brought up many ideas for uses and curricular links. Classes in school planted maintained, grew, picked and ate the produce. Each bed had different soils so for the first year we decided to grow as wide a variety of crops as we could purely to see what grew well.

Last year we grew 5 varieties of tomatoes, carrots, sweet peas, courgette, marrows, cabbage, sweet corn, peppers, potatoes, strawberries, pumpkins and peas. The grounds area hosted a wildflower bed which was used for Art as well as bringing in a huge amount of wild life for crop pollination. Our first ‘Grow It, Cook it, Eat It’ was a huge success and supported by the whole school, staff, pupils and local community. After last years success we are now focussing on very traditional foods - good Scottish fare. We are working on this years growing plan in consultation with Biology and Home Economics. We are looking to our COPE classes to help with the practical planting side. We are going to introduce gooseberries and rhubarb as well as growing from seed.

One of the things that it is sometimes necessary to overcome is vandalism. An incident happened with our polytunnel when a person in the middle of the night decided to take a short cut through the school by scaling the high fence. On the way they broke into the poly tunnel, had a cigarette and set the poly tunnel and the inside raised beds on fire. The poly tunnel was no longer able to be used. Our head teacher made a tannoy announcement to the whole school about the vandalism. Staff and pupils were horrified. We contacted the company who supplied the tunnel and they very kindly replaced the parts. It was very important to us that pupils knew that although the vandalism took place, we must move on. There is little you can do when it has happened so it is always best to find a solution and not dwell on what has happened. We quickly put the tunnel back together and started again with the help of the local community, local businesses and staff and pupils. Setbacks are part of trying to grow things: it may be vandalism, it may be crop disease, it may be adverse weather or even rabbits. Whatever it is, we like pupils to know that the only way is forward, to learn from it, and to make each achievement count.