Thirty Eco-Schools students from six schools recently conducted an environmental audit at the Ministry for Education building in Floriana.

After a debriefing by Eco-Schools national coordinator Paul Pace, groups of the students chose specific areas of the building to audit. Accompanied by their teachers and the Eco-Schools coordination team, the students toured and examined the building and audited various areas, including the customer care offices, reception area, the minister’s, the permanent secretary’s and the secretariat’s offices, boardrooms, kitchenettes, bathrooms, restrooms, corridors, fire exits, waiting rooms, terraces, the yard and various other facilities.

The students also spoke with the staff to understand better in which way the existing building design, operations and in-house policies are contributing to a more sustainable lifestyle. The students’ recommendations will now be collated and tabled into an action plan that will be presented to Education Minister Evarist Bartolo and permanent secretary Francis Fabri later this year.

In a year’s time the Eco-Schools students will once again visit the ministry to see if the recommendations they put forward were adopted.The audit was conducted by students from the following Green Flag Schools: St Thomas More College secondary school, Santa Lucia, St Augustine College secondary school, St Thomas More College middle school, Tarxien, The Archbishop’s Minor Seminary, Rabat, St Nicholas College primary school, Rabat, and San Ġorġ Preca College Primary A, Paola.

The Eco-Schools programme has been running in Malta by Nature Trust – FEE Malta since 2002. It has today reached over 83 per cent of the entire student population in independent, State and Church schools. The Eco-Schools programme is an international programme run by FEE International and has been acknowledged by the UN as the largest global network promoting Education for Sustainable Development in schools and communities.