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Ocean-Friendly Schools Award

Empower your students to take action for our seas with our brand-new award

The award

The Ocean-Friendly Schools Award is a free, curriculum-linked initiative that's all about inspiring and empowering young people to care for our ocean.

The award has been designed to be run by a class, school council or eco team, and meets Eco-Schools requirements for the Marine topic.

GBBC at Sandbanks 2022

Credit: Billy Barraclough

How it works

Choose an action area from the options below, and work through a series of steps to achieve your award and become an accredited Ocean-Friendly School.

Each step includes an 'essential' task and a selection of 'optional' tasks, but there are detailed resources provided to help you.

You'll then need to submit evidence of completing the steps using our Surveymonkey form so that we can track and prove your progress. Once you've completed all the steps, you'll receive a physical award to display with pride!

  • Step 1: Explore the issue
  • Step 2: Evaluate your impact on the problem by collecting data
  • Step 3: Take action to improve the issue in the community
  • Step 4: Share what you've done and encourage others to change

You'll be connected up with one of our Ocean-Friendly Schools Champions who'll support you through the award, including delivering a launch assembly (online or in person if possible) to get your students interested and a celebration session once they've achieved their award.

You'll also receive a printed welcome pack of resources, including your guide to getting started, topic poster and wildlife poster.

The action areas to choose from are:

Clean up our seas

Marine pollution is diverse, from tiny fibres shed from clothes to chemicals washed down the sink.

Take action now and help tackle ocean pollution at source.

plastic bottle.png

Stop overfishing

90% of world fish stocks are fully or over-exploited from fishing.

This action area is all about taking steps to protect fish species and help people make more sustainable seafood choices to help fish stocks recover.

Empty and broken scallop shells possibly due to the raking action of dredges Lyme Bay Scotland Colin Munro.

Credit: Colin Munro/Marine-bio-images

Fight climate change

Our ocean is a potential hero in the fight against climate change.

Find out more about the link between the ocean and climate and take action to improve the sustainability of your school.

Better world protest, Unsplash, Markus Spiske

Credit: Markus Spiske, Unsplash

Sign up

We're now fully booked for the award this academic year. If your school is keen to get involved, register your interest for September 2024 using our online form.

Register here

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