Use your website as a tool to help you become a sustainable school

The DCSF National Framework for Sustainable Schools identifies eight ‘doorways' through which schools may choose to initiate or extend their sustainable school activity.

Using us to provide your website is a perfect example of sustainable procurement through the Purchasing & Waste Doorway.

But this is just the start of how our websites can help your school become more sustainable. See ideas for using the Doorways below.

• Purchasing & Waste:
  • Publish the school prospectus online saving paper & potential use of petroleum based inks
  • Publish parent letters
• Inclusion & Participation
  • Enable pupils to publish their own pages
  • Enable the school council to publicise school issues
• Local well-being
  • Create a community section with links to community resources
  • Publicise details of extended school resources available for the community
  • Offer to use an area of the school website for local issues putting the school at the heart of the community
  • Create a community news section
• Global dimension
  • "Twin" your website with international schools
  • Organise virtual visits of international schools

Sustainable Services

It is very important to us that we provide services in a sustainable and ethical way that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Have a look at our Ethical Policy to get the full story - it's not just about being environmentally conscientious.

By 2020, the Government would like all schools to be models of sustainable procurement, using goods and services of high environmental and ethical standards from local sources where practicable, and increasing value for money by reusing, repairing and recycling as many goods as possible.

Source: Teachernet - Sustainable Schools National Framework

Sustainable Websites

By choosing a Green Schools Online website you can be assured that neither the design & development, nor the ongoing hosting of your website has contributed to carbon emissions. Every year, for every customer, we offset 1 tonne of CO2 through our carbon partner co2balance. One tonne of CO2 is enough to offset not just your web server emissions for a year but also the emissions from an average classroom for 6 months.

Sustainable Customer Relationships

Our aim is to build a long term relationship with our customers. To do otherwise would be a waste of both our resources and yours. We aim to do this by delighting our customers with the quality of our services, our support and the excellent value for money they represent.

Sustainable Suppliers

For similar reasons, we aim to build long term relationships with all of our suppliers. Our suppliers are carefully selected not just on the more common bases of quality and value but also on their environmental and ethical credentials. For example:

• We bank with the Cooperative Bank which has a long standing range of ethical policies
• Our electricity comes from suppliers who use renewable sources such as wind farms.

CarbonZero

Green Schools Online is a carbon neutral business with zero carbon emissions. We have worked with our carbon offset partner, co2balance to systematically examine our activities and eliminate those which can be eliminated, reducing others and finally offsetting the balance. Our Ethical Policy has more details.

Accessibility

The team behind Green Schools Online were among the earliest web developers to get behind accessible web design. We embraced the recommendations of the RNIB and the Web Accessibility Initiative of the W3C, the internet's governing body. As an ethical company, we believe that we have a moral obligation to encourage inclusion and responsible practice.

This is what the RNIB say about website design for the blind and partially sited:

If I create a text-only version of my website, it will be accessible to everyone, won't it? I don't need to worry about the graphic version.

Not really. It might ensure that those using speech or braille output can easily access the content of your site, but for anyone with reading or cognitive problems, a text only site can be a real problem. Partially sighted users, too, can benefit greatly from a well designed combination of text and graphics and would much rather visit a site which is visually appealing.

Source: RNIB - Web Access Centre

All our websites offer: