Schools Programme – Progress Update January 2025
River Holme Connections
As agreed a cheque for £5000 has been sent to River Home Connections to support their Year In Industry student and the Riverfly Monitoring Project. The year in industry students get involved in a wide range of activities during their eleven-month placement including environmental education with local schools, practical conservation work, riverfly monitoring, survey work, applied research for their dissertation and anything else that crops up in between.
Cranborne Primary School
Trevor Harrington has had a discussion with the head of Science at the school and they would like to apply to WCT for funding for equipment to support science learning associated with the wild life pond typically microscopes and pond dipping nets etc at a cost of £333.
London Museum of Water And Steam
STEAM EXPLORERS STEM CLUB
Steam Explorers course offers opportunities for 14 to 18 year olds to engage with engineering, industrial archaeology and water supply. 16 youths took part in the two courses offered last year, the museum have retained 3 youth volunteers who do engineering work at the museum on Thursday evenings and some Saturdays.
The next STEAM Explorer course is planned to start in May 2025. We currently have £1253 left in the STEAM Explorer restricted fund to run the course. The October session incurred a cost of £923 so what is left in the budget is more than enough for the May 2025 session.
LMWS BURSARY SCHEME
The WCT bursaries fund visits to the London Museum of Water and Steam for schools with a high percentage of disadvantaged children to learn about the fundamental principles of water supply and water treatment.
We have spent £710 on bursary funded school visits in 2022/23 plus a further £1060 in 2024 out of the total bursary funding to date of £5220. 328 children have visited via the bursary scheme so far. A two class visit for Green Dragon Lane Primary school is currently being scheduled for Spring or Summer Term 2025.
Spitalfields City Farm
Our bursary scheme supports half day educational visits to the Farm at low cost (£200). The children learn about food production, growing vegetables and fruit, pollination, natural pest control and animal welfare.
To date there have been 7 visits from 5 different schools (some with 2 classes) resulting in an expenditure to date of £1950 out of the £4000 Trust funding. Visits currently being scheduled for this spring and summer include Riverside Bridge special school in Barking Riverside (2 classes), Hugh Myddelton Primary, Winton Primary and a secondary school in Ilford.
Quentin Blake Centre For Illustration
I visited the site of the proposed Quentin Blake Centre of Illustration at New River Head just before Xmas. Construction work is well underway, and it was encouraging to hear about the space they are developing especially for children to learn about the history and development of water technology utilising the power of illustration. The Trust has agreed to £6225 of funding to develop a pilot course with a few selected schools which would then be rolled out to other schools, when the centre is opened later this year. The finished programme would then be funded by attending schools. The pilot course will also facilitate the development of a wider learning programme,informed by these workshops, which will engage 6,800 pupils and 740 teachers to 2027.
They are happy for our 2 special schools in the area, Hugh Myddelton and Winton, to be involved in the pilot, and both schools are very keen to be involved. The focus is on enhancing learning about water science and history using the power of illustration, which is a great way to engage with schools, and fits very closely with the educational aims of WCT. The centre is likely to be very popular when opened and should be a great advert for WCT.
Northease Manor School
Northease Manor is a special educational needs school based in Rodmell, near Lewes on a Grade II listed site, where the students are neurodiverse, most of whom have diagnoses of autism/ADHD.
The Trust has so far provided £1,350 towards stage 1 of a project to restore their horticultural garden, to match the £1,300 raised by the school so far. These funds have been used by the school to buy top soil, turf. sleepers, paving and two solar water pumps for the raised beds/ watering.
The school are making good progress on restoring the garden with the work to date. The plant beds have new wooden edgings which has really made a difference, all the old rotting sleepers have been removed and the students and staff are all saying how good the area looks now. Also a layer of topsoil has been added to the beds by the students themselves. We remain in touch with school regards any further funding requirements.
Welsh Schools
The Trust has continued with an annual award of £1000 to Ysgol Y Gogarth School to support children with craft-based projects and workshops.
Coppermill Primary School
The Trust received a request for funding for a £25,000 major project to develop the outdoor space at Coppermill Primary School in NE London. The project, consisting of 4 phases, includes the development of outdoor teaching areas along with tree planting and rain gardens. Phase 1 is estimated to cost around £25,000 50% funded by the DFE and 50% from a charity. They needed a financial commitment at short notice to apply for DFE funding. I discussed the request with Roger North and Peter Hall and responded initially that we may be able to support in some way one aspect of the overall project, but our preference would be to visit them at some point to learn more about the project and feed this back to our trustees to get their support before signing up to any financial arrangement.
Rob Casey, Water Conservation Trust – 23/01/25
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