Location: Academy Road, Ashington, NE63 9FZ
Josephine Butler Campus
Head of Campus: Mrs C Marriot
Consultant: Matt Savill
School background
The Josephine Butler Campus is based on the main site of The Academy, in Ashington, alongside the Duke’s Secondary Campus and Castle School. We serve the wards of Ashington Central, College and Hirst. We opened in 2012 and have capacity for over 510 children aged 3-11 years.
At the Josephine Butler Campus, as a team of professionals who care about each child, we celebrate the uniqueness and talents of every child. We have high expectations of behaviour and achievement in all areas and therefore focus equally on the personal, social and academic development of all of our children.
School’s previous lighting situation
Josephine Butler Campus was fitted with outdated fluorescent lighting that were producing insufficient output. Frequent lamp failures created inadequately lit classrooms as well as high maintenance costs which the school had to fund. The school had many fluorescent tubes that they could no longer get, which meant a lot of lights out which over time was effecting the working and learning environment. The lights had fluorescent glare and the starters kept going causing the lights to flicker which was disruptive to learning.
Funding
The School funded the scheme using The Educational Social Enterprise Fund for LED Lighting. The ‘Social Enterprise Fund’ enables schools to install LED Lighting, lower energy costs and reduce their carbon footprint without having to find the upfront capital to purchase the equipment. By simply paying an annual lease amount the scheme generates cash surpluses for the school from day one to be reinvested in educating disadvantaged children. There are no capital costs to the school and the lease repayments are made from the savings, there will always be a surplus left for the school after the lease payments are covered.
End Result
Josephine Butler Campus was completed in 2 Phases with over 3000 LED lights installed, They now have improved the learning environment through brighter, more natural classroom lighting and benefit from reduced energy consumption which requires zero hours of maintenance time changing lamps.
The new LED lights will not only save our schools money, but we will also incorporate it into learning about the environment and renewable energy. The solution implemented by Renewable Solutions Lighting really was a no-brainer. Better lighting, reduced carbon footprint and all funded through savings.
We look forward to enabling our pupils to study the energy savings data created by our new lights. We are also excited by the prospect of our community developing a better understanding of how to both make financial savings whilst investing in their environment. At a time when our pupils are being inspired by Greta Thunberg to take action to reduce the impact of global warming, it’s great that we can lead by example in taking a very significant step to reduce the carbon footprints of our schools.Alan Hardie, Chief Executive Officer of the Trust
