Teachers View - Florence Brown Community School

Florence Brown Community School is a special school for children with complex needs. It serves two communities. The school is situated in the centre of an inner city estate in a deprived area of Bristol, but only draws a small number of pupils from it. Our school community is city wide with children coming from all parts of the city.

We like to make the claim that Florence Brown is "a school without walls". By this we mean that we engage as fully as we can. A number of communities use our facilities and expertise in many aspects of learning. We have four satellite classes in local mainstream schools and provide a revolving door service for primary schools - to send young people who need a different environment to for up to two terms. They return to their mainstream school with added confidence, new skills and coping-strategies. We also work with our local schools to provide an alternative curriculum for up to half a day a week for groups at KS2 and KS4.

student sanding a table It is not surprising that the Barclays New Futures scheme had great appeal for us. We applied for funding to carry out a series of environmental projects designed to meet local need and raise the profile of the school in the local and wider community.

The first project was to re-style a traffic roundabout. This involved making walling blocks from concrete and then laying out the island with planting areas. We planted shrubs in the centre and seasonal bedding in the outer beds. The expected vandalism of the site did not take place, and it continues to be a feature which attracts interest. Bristol contract services provide surplus plants to keep it going and funding from the local regeneration trust helps sustain the project. The KGB (Knowle Gardening Bunch) helped. One of the spinoffs was an invitation to create a community garden.

Our other environmental project is Community Composting. We wanted to set up a site to process our own and local peoples green waste. Some of the Barclays money went towards an 8hp shredder, but we needed a further grant from Education Extra to complete the purchase. Our local MP presented it to us in 1998. From slow beginnings the service developed to such an extent that our relatively small shredder could not cope with the vast heap of privet hedging, conifers and grass being generated by the local community.

We were now also being used by the "Community Caretaker" - funded by regeneration - to help elderly and disadvantaged people reclaim their overgrown gardens. This scheme also offered regular work experience for our KS4 students.

The heap of green waste became such a problem that we had to appeal to our local "Recycling Consortium" in Bristol to help us obtain grant aid to carry out the necessary processing. It was not educationally sound to be spending too much time shredding at the expense of other areas of the curriculum. We obtained a grant from Landfill Tax Credits, which enabled us to bring in a variety of contractors to carry out work. We settled on a contractor from Yorkshire - no suitable local contractor could be found with a machine that could chop, grind and blend the material to make it possible to mature within an acceptable time limit. The cost of these sessions was in the order of £450 per day, and the mountain of waste between visits was always a concern on health, safety and fire risk grounds.

student laying paving stones We worked with local partners to bid for more landfill money to buy our own machinery and a worker to use it. This bid was successful and we ended up with a grant for £152,000 (£50,000 from Bristol City Council Neighbourhood Renewal Fund and £102,000 from the SITA Environmental Trust). A partner was needed, as the Landfill Tax Money demands a third party contribution.

We have bought an ECO green composting machine with grab-crane and weighing machine attached and a 160hp Mercedes Unimog Tractor to tow and power it. We also have specialist garaging and modified fencing of the site to accommodate the enhanced scheme. We appointed an existing LSA to the post of Compost Technician. He has previous experience of working with plant and heavy machinery, and also works well with young people.

This project will need to be self-sufficient within 2 years. In order to make this happen the machinery and driver will be hired to other groups and organisations.

We plan to offer a course to trainees of 17+ at NVQ level 2 to become Composting Technicians, funded by the local LSC. Our own KS4 students will have the opportunity to work on this scheme at entry level. We plan to develop worm farming and possibly charcoal and patio heater fuel as a commercial venture. All the projects will provide training and work experience, enabling us to employ more instructors for both our own students and trainees from outside.

A word of warning - if you are considering going into Community Composting, do check out and abide by the regulations. The Environment Agency will need to exempt you from being a waste management site with all that that implies. Keeping too much on site at any time breaks the rules.

Through the Community Education Development Centre and a Millennium Volunteers scheme some of the KS4 students have been working with the local recycling consortium. They have produced a series of worksheets to be used by our own students and others in the area.

The composting scheme is linked to our other community business. Greenfingers and Concrete Creations is a not for profit company in the process of registering with Companies House. It is a partnership between the school and local people, advised and assisted by Business in the Community. Its main operation is the manufacture and marketing of concrete garden features. With a range of over 80 products - from 9ft fencing posts to garden gnomes - it has the potential to do even better in the future. The parent company - Greenfingers - has been established for over 15 years, but is now looking to become fully community based. Several local women, who attended a concrete creations evening class decided that they wished to take things further and formed the company. A workshop (former groundsman's storage complex) is equipped with a wide variety of moulds and machinery.

We are hoping to create 1 FTE post to work with trainees and KS4 students manufacturing concrete products, at the same time gaining GNVQ level 2 qualifications in manufacturing. There is also scope for business admin training, as the company will need to invoice customers, keep financial records, order materials and keep stock records.

The prospective tutors have had some practice in delivering a course to a group of local people from a specific road identified by Bristol Housing Services as in need of tidying up. Tutor fees for the course were paid by the local Community Education Providers Network. Housing Services paid for the material costs, which included a prize of a Ground Force type garden makeover for a course participant.

Greenfingers is also active in minor landscaping and fencing jobs. The company has its own insurance, separate from the school, to cover products and public liability.

All of our work can be accredited. The composting and landscaping work falls within the framework of the Welsh Joint Board Certificate of Achievement in Land Studies. Manufacturing, landscaping and concrete work fit the ASDAN Youth award scheme and the City and Guilds Skill Power Certificate. It would appear that the scope and possibilities for accreditation at the appropriate level is ever growing. We justify everything we do in the alternative curriculum by reference to appropriate accreditation.

Finally, there is an international dimension to our work related curriculum. We have linked with a "pratikschool" in the north of Holland and have visited them twice during camping holidays. Our students have worked alongside their Dutch counterparts on a variety of practical activities such as welding, work on small engines, carpentry, IT, retail and catering. We are very interested in their system which devotes at least 50% of their time to specific practical skills training alongside weekly work experience. They, in turn, are interested in our enterprise activities and community based experience.. We are working towards an informal teacher exchange so that we can learn more from each other and widen opportunities for the young people with whom we work.

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