2009 Community Award

Frogs and turtles roaming the school grounds, a wetland, a dry forest, a vegie patch – it sounds like Eden off the Nepean Highway. But there’s serious learning to be done at Bentleigh West Primary School, and a lot of it revolves around the environment. The school has a full-time environmental science coordinator, and educates other schools and community groups wanting to make their mark. Every year, it holds a sustainability expo, in which pupils from grades 1 and 2 run a restaurant using produce from the vegie patch and eggs from the chooks, and grades 5 and 6 shoot and edit TV programs on environmental issues. The school’s buildings boast passive heating and cooling, ceiling fans, solar panels, water tanks, worm farms and recycling. Not surprisingly, this is the second consecutive year Bentleigh West Primary School has made the awards’ shortlist.