Analyse community use of your school buildings
Stoke Park Primary School, Thursday, 14 March 2024
15
Analyst
KS3, KS4, KS5
What you did
After talking with some year 5 children about the use of the school after hours, they said that no one but Mrs Knight is here after they all go home. I explained that our school isn't used for the community and that school is closed at 6pm every night and only open for maintenance a few days in each school holiday. They have asked If I turn everything off in the holidays and weekends to save money? They have said they will make sure that they turn all their switches in class off when they break up for weekends and holidays so I wont need to worry about it. I have said I do go round the school and turn everything that doesn't need to be on off.
Activity description
What do you think goes on in your school once the pupils and staff leave? It's actually common practice for many schools to offer their facilities to community groups, sports clubs and other organisations at evenings, weekends and during holidays.
Well, whyever not? The community group or organisation gets access to good facilities and the school receives income from the bookings.
This situation can, however make it a bit more complicated to analyse your school's energy use. How can you determine whether your evening electricity consumption is high because students left all the computers on in the ICT suite or because a pensioner's netball club has been using the gym? Or whether the gas consumption is high because the boiler timer is faulty or the local dramatic society has been using your draughty theatre facilities and whacking the heating up.
You can use your analytical skills to develop a clearer picture of the impact that community use has on your school's energy consumption.
Before you look at the data, try to answer these questions:
1. Based on your knowledge of your school, when do you think school buildings are used by the community? Weekdays or weekend? Mornings or evenings? Perhaps there is no community use.
2. What days have the most community use? The least?
3. Which parts of the school are used by the community.
You may need to ask the Office Staff or Site Manager to help you with the answers to these questions.
Have a look at these charts, showing weekly electricity consumption. Were you right?
If no community use is shown, but you know it takes place at your school, you need to add the community use timings on Energy Sparks. You can do this as an Admin user for your school by going to Manage School - Edit School times.
This chart shows you electricity consumption from 2 weeks.
You can click on one of the days to see the electricity use for that day in more detail. Click on the colours to toggle on/off whether you see all electricity use or only the use at specific times (eg. when school is open or at weekends).
You can also choose to see this information as £, CO2 or kWh.
Now you know when community groups are using your school and how much electricity is being used.
What can you do with this information?
You might want to choose to calculate how much your school is spending on electricity when community groups are in. Pass this information on to your office team. They need information like this to make sure they are charging groups enough for the use of your facilities.
Next: let the community groups using your spaces know that you're trying to cut energy use. What could they do to help?
Here's another challenge for you.
The following shows the electricity used by a school. Have a good look at the values on the Y-axis.
Well, whyever not? The community group or organisation gets access to good facilities and the school receives income from the bookings.
This situation can, however make it a bit more complicated to analyse your school's energy use. How can you determine whether your evening electricity consumption is high because students left all the computers on in the ICT suite or because a pensioner's netball club has been using the gym? Or whether the gas consumption is high because the boiler timer is faulty or the local dramatic society has been using your draughty theatre facilities and whacking the heating up.
You can use your analytical skills to develop a clearer picture of the impact that community use has on your school's energy consumption.
Before you look at the data, try to answer these questions:
1. Based on your knowledge of your school, when do you think school buildings are used by the community? Weekdays or weekend? Mornings or evenings? Perhaps there is no community use.
2. What days have the most community use? The least?
3. Which parts of the school are used by the community.
You may need to ask the Office Staff or Site Manager to help you with the answers to these questions.
Have a look at these charts, showing weekly electricity consumption. Were you right?
If no community use is shown, but you know it takes place at your school, you need to add the community use timings on Energy Sparks. You can do this as an Admin user for your school by going to Manage School - Edit School times.
Change units
Explore
We do not have enough data at the moment to display this chart
This chart shows you electricity consumption from 2 weeks.
You can click on one of the days to see the electricity use for that day in more detail. Click on the colours to toggle on/off whether you see all electricity use or only the use at specific times (eg. when school is open or at weekends).
You can also choose to see this information as £, CO2 or kWh.
Now you know when community groups are using your school and how much electricity is being used.
What can you do with this information?
You might want to choose to calculate how much your school is spending on electricity when community groups are in. Pass this information on to your office team. They need information like this to make sure they are charging groups enough for the use of your facilities.
Next: let the community groups using your spaces know that you're trying to cut energy use. What could they do to help?
Here's another challenge for you.
The following shows the electricity used by a school. Have a good look at the values on the Y-axis.
Question:
The carbon emissions from the evening use of the school are higher than that of the day time, when pupils are in the school. Why do you think this is?
The carbon emissions from the evening use of the school are higher than that of the day time, when pupils are in the school. Why do you think this is?