Hear from the winners of our 2025/26 Scoreboard Competition
In this interview, we speak to two of our scoreboard competition champions about what motivated them to take part, and what lessons they would like to share with other schools.
Our scoreboard competition this year has been incredibly fierce with the winning schools recording a record number of points, and more schools than ever taking part. An incredible 45 schools clocked up over 1,000 each, and we’re looking forward to seeing how all that activity is translating into savings.
Here, we speak to Oasis Academy Enfield, this year’s winner, and Stillness Infant School, who won third place, about their experience.
You can also hear from the winners of our Pupil Power Award, Horsford Primary – Holt Road, for inspiration on how your eco-team can help you make small changes that really add up.
What motivated you to take part?
Oasis Academy Enfield: Our Eco Club students are incredibly passionate about protecting the environment and making our school a greener place. They are always eager to find ways to reduce waste and save energy, and they genuinely care about the impact their actions can have. Their enthusiasm has been the driving force behind everything they did this year.
Stillness Infant School: It is the first year we have joined Energy Sparks after having had solar panels installed at our school in October 2025. We knew we would be saving money and carbon emissions with the addition of the solar panels, but we were excited to see if we could go even further by embracing more energy saving activities.
What does the prize mean to your school and students?
Oasis Academy Enfield: This prize is a wonderful recognition of all the hard work, commitment and enthusiasm the Eco Club has shown throughout the year. The students have gone above and beyond, leading assemblies, raising awareness about energy conservation, and regularly reminding staff and students to switch off lights and equipment when not in use.
One of our Year 10 students summed it up perfectly: “Small changes can make a big difference if everyone works together.”
Above: A student from Oasis Academy Enfield adjusts a radiator thermostat.
Stillness Infant School: We are thrilled to have achieved third place in this year’s Energy Sparks Scoreboard competition. We have decided to spend our prize on purchasing plant-based washing up liquid to replace the one we currently use that states ‘harmful to aquatic life with long lasting effects’ on the back of the bottle.
We visited another local school back in October last year who had started a campaign to inform the school community about the effects of many washing up liquids on water systems and hopefully encourage people to change their choice of product. We had promised the Climate Ambassadors we would look into it and write to our SLT once the ‘energy stuff’ had finished. Little did we know we were going to dive this deep into energy saving activities and actions!
Did you learn anything interesting from the experience?
Oasis Academy Enfield: One of the most valuable lessons was seeing how much of an impact simple actions can have. We learned that raising awareness is just as important as making physical changes. Students became much more aware of energy usage around the school and actively encouraged others to adopt good habits.
Stillness Infant School: With an amazing group of Year Two Climate Ambassadors and a staff energy team, we took part in training, actions and so many activities!
We now have a targeted school ‘switch off’ every holiday, and read our Wednesday Energy Sparks alert email for potential issues (or a virtual pat on the back!).
Were there any features of Energy Sparks that you found particularly helpful?
Oasis Academy Enfield: Energy Sparks helped make energy data easy to discuss with students. The visual reports and clear information allowed students to see the direct impact of their actions and gave them motivation to continue improving.
Stillness Infant School: Our Climate Ambassadors found the activities on the website to be good fun, although it was the easier ones that worked the best for 6 year olds. It also inspired our Eco-Lead to devise more ways to engage the children with energy saving actions.
For our school, using Energy Sparks has helped us to become more responsive and responsible in our energy usage than ever before, which has lead to greater savings both financially and in helping reduce emissions in our changing climate.
Do you have any words of advice or inspiration for other schools?
Oasis Academy Enfield: Start small and involve students as much as possible. When young people feel ownership of a project, they become powerful advocates for change.
Stillness Infant School: Our whole team works together to address or change behaviour in school, [including looking at] whether the heating can go down (or even off) within a day or two, rather than leaving it – and this has all proved to be really straightforward to action!
About the winners:
Oasis Academy Enfield scored an astonishing 6,085 points this year, earning them first place (£500) on our scoreboard for the second year running!
Their efforts are really paying off. This year they have achieved a 9% reduction in electricity consumption, saving almost 5 tonnes of CO2 and £9,600! At the moment we don’t have enough gas data to make similar comparisons.
Damers First School (part of Wessex Multi-Academy Trust) scored 5,370 points this year, earning them second place (£300) on our scoreboard.
Pupils have been involved in a wide range of activities, from creating switch-off and transportation policies, to working with their caretaker and kitchen staff to look at energy use in different areas of the school, to leading on holiday switch-offs and beyond.
Although the school hasn’t made significant energy savings this year, it is already one of our lowest electricity-consuming schools. Its gas meter needs to be upgraded before gas data can be viewed in Energy Sparks; however, the school still took part in last year’s Winter Heat Saver competition, demonstrating that it’s still possible to take meaningful action to reduce heating energy use without access to gas consumption data.
Stillness Infant School in Lewisham earned third place (£150) this year after recording 4,695 points.
Their activities have been wide ranging, covering both electricity and gas waste. We particularly loved reading about how the whole community has got involved, with a range of staff members introduced to Energy Sparks and signed up to receive alerts and training.
The school already had low electricity consumption, but they still managed a respectable 6% reduction this year, saving over 400kg CO2 and almost £500. A lot of these savings have come from reducing electricity use during the holidays, with spring half term electricity use almost half what it was last year! For gas, we only have enough data to make comparisons for the last three months, but they’re making excellent savings already!
Above: Climate Ambassadors at Stillness Infant School speak to their caretaker, Mr Pete about the school’s heating settings. They found out that he checks the boiler and its settings everyday, sometimes three times in one day! Sometimes he turns the heating off earlier than usual as the school is too hot, but generally it is on from 6am to 10am. Mr Pete told the children to tell him if they thought their classrooms were too hot or cold.
Acknowledgements
We would like to congratulate all of our scoreboard winners this year, and thank them for their hard work.
We would also like to thank staff and pupils at Oasis Academy Enfield, as well as Ms Zara Mitton and Mrs Annie Grimes from Sillness Infant school for sharing their insights with us for this article.
