Ocean-Friendly Schools Award

Empower your students to take action for the ocean with our free award

The award

The Ocean-Friendly Schools Award is all about sparking your group’s curiosity about the ocean and building their confidence in taking action to protect it.

Established in 2022, the award is a free, curriculum-linked initiative which has been designed to be run by a class, school council or eco team. It also meets Eco-Schools requirements for the Marine topic.

Applications for this year have now closed. Scroll down to read our FAQs and register for September 2025!

Four young people stand on a beach next to a Beach Clean flag

Credit: Billy Barraclough

How it works

There are three action areas to choose from which focus on key conservation issues: marine pollution, sustainable seafood and climate change.

Each action area has four steps (listed below) for which there are required activities to complete. There are also optional activities your group can complete to further their learning.

Step 1: Explore the issue
Step 2: Evaluate your impact on the problem
Step 3: Act to improve the issue in your school
Step 4: Share what you've learned and encourage others to change

We provide a full suite of free, downloadable resources from our website to support you through each step.

As you complete your journey to become an Ocean-Friendly School, you'll need to submit evidence of your group's working using our online form so we can track your progress.

Once you've completed all the steps and submitted your evidence, you'll receive an engraved bamboo award to display with pride. We also have some post-award activities, like our Ocean Literacy Quiz, for your group to complete.

Action areas

FAQs

Support from your own dedicated Ocean-Friendly Schools Champion
A printed award handbook including two A3 posters and a checklist of the activities to complete
A live online launch session with your Champion for your group to kickstart their journey
A suite of free, downloadable resources to help you work through each step
An engraved bamboo award to display with pride once you’ve achieved Ocean-Friendly School status

Registering your school using our registration form
Submitting a pre- and post-award survey
Supporting your group to individually complete their Ocean Literacy Quiz before and after finishing the award
Completing the required activities under each step in your award handbook
Regularly submitting evidence of your work – remember to take lots of photos as you go!
Communicating with your Champion if you need support or your circumstances change

The award is open to schools across the UK, whether you're based inland or by the sea, and the content is aimed at primary-level learners. Unfortunately we cannot accept home educated groups of fewer than five students.

We've designed the award to be run by a class, school council or eco team. Your group will need to individually complete an Ocean Literacy Quiz before starting and after finishing the award, and they'll take part in a live, online launch session with their Champion to kickstart the award.

After their launch session, your group will lead the work on the award and complete the activities required. The idea is that they'll then share what they've learned with their year group or the whole school and encourage them to be more ocean friendly.

It should take around one full term to complete the award, but if it takes longer or you finish earlier, that’s not a problem!

The deadline to complete the award is four weeks before the end of your academic year. This allows us to review your final evidence, check we’ve received your post-award survey and student quiz responses, and issue your award before the summer break.

The Ocean Literacy Quiz has been designed to capture your pupils’ thoughts, feelings and knowledge about the ocean.

We ask that the group leading on the award (e.g. class, school council or eco team) complete the quiz before starting and after finishing work on the award, as their responses are a great indicator of their progress.

The quiz is integral to the award and is a required step for your students.

We suggest that you collect and submit your evidence as you go – this makes it much easier to keep track of what you’ve completed and what’s outstanding. Don’t forget to use your printed award handbook to tick off what you’ve done!

Submitting your evidence is simple. Our online form has been set up to guide you through each of the steps with space to add a detailed description of your activities as well as supporting images, videos or documents.

Once we’ve received your evidence for each step, your Champion will review it and let you know if anything else is needed before you move on to the next step.

If you're having any issues submitting your evidence through the form, please get in touch with your Champion who can help.

Ocean-Friendly Schools in 2024

An incredible twenty-four schools across the UK became accredited Ocean-Friendly Schools in 2024, with almost half of the schools based inland.

Now in its third year, the award centres on ocean literacy and aims to develop students’ understanding of our impact on the ocean, the ecosystem services it provides and how our health and ocean health are inextricably linked.

If you'd like to join us and help make waves in your school, sign up below for the 2025/6 academic year!

A group of school children in a classroom raise their hands

Credit: Park School, Bournemouth

It's amazing seeing the pupils' depth of understanding on ocean and climate change issues. They were all rightly proud of themselves and were great at sharing their learning and successes! They are empowered to keep going.
Ms Fowlie, Forgue School (Aberdeenshire)

Sign up

If your school is keen to get involved, register your interest to start in September 2025 using our online form.

If you're a current Ocean-Friendly School, you can access your resources here.