Eco-friendly lessons: St Michael’s School in Digha. Picture by Ashok Sinha

School students and teachers in the state would now be able to win prizes for promoting environment awareness in their institutions.

The education, and forests and environment departments have invited applications from both government and private schools for a prize on how green their school campuses are. The aim of the competition is to promote greenery and create awareness among school students about a clean environment.

Three secondary and an equal number of higher secondary schools would be awarded prizes in the competition.

Rajiv Kumar, technical forestry officer, said: “The awards would be given on the audit of a school’s environmental practices. The aim of the award is to encourage and support institutions to build a green environment on campus.”

The private schools have been asked to submit their application by August 31 at the office of the nearest district education officers (DEOs).

In case of government schools, the DEOs concerned will select the schools with green campuses and submit the list.

Besides the details of the school, the application should also provide information about its area and the number of trees on the campus.

The institutions would be judged on the number of herbs, shrubs and trees on the campus.

The competition would be held in two rounds — the district level and the state level.

In the first round, only schools with 50 or more trees would be selected. Environmentalists as well as officials from the education and forests department would judge them.

Kumar said: “One secondary and one higher secondary school will get an award of Rs 11,000 each. The second and third prizes would be for Rs 5,000 and Rs 2,500, respectively.”

Students and school authorities are happy about the initiative of the government.

Radiant International School vice-principal Radhika said: “The government initiative is really encouraging. It will help in creating awareness about green and clean environment.”

She said the biggest advantage of such an initiative was that students would get to learn about the environment.

“Schools that have greenery on campus not only look beautiful but are also a healthy environment for student,” said the vice-principal, adding that Radiant International School was spread over 7 acres and covered with greenery.

Class V student of DAV-BSEB, Anmol Sahay, said: “We have been learning about greenery from textbooks. Now we will get practical experience in keeping the campus clean.”