PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Use 5 October 2006

SCEMES National KS2 Poetry Competition 2006/7 On the theme of THE ENVIRONMENT

We are very pleased to announce the launch of our first poetry competition on National Poetry Day, 5 October 2006.

The competition

The competition is free for schools to enter and the closing date is 30 March 2007.
1st Prize is £10,000 spending money for the winning school and there are prizes for the winning children.
The competition pages on our website are packed with a variety of information, resources and links on poetry, the environment and literacy, and they are regularly updated.
We are featuring pages from childrens poet laureate for Wales, Gwyneth Glyn, popular childrens poet, Andrew Fusek Peters, Eco-Schools, the National Literacy Association (NLA), and the National Association for the Teaching of English (NATE), amongst others.
We encourage poems in both English and Welsh, and from children with special educational needs.

Sustainable Schools

The idea for a competition on this theme was inspired by the DfES Sustainable Schools Consultation Document and was developed after we conducted research into how such a competition could prove most beneficial for teachers and children. We sent out questionnaires to 20,000 primary schools for their opinions and, from their feedback, we have developed a competition that offers more than just prizes.
We have brought together a plentiful range of resources produced by poets, teachers and organisations specifically for schools. In this way we hope to make the competition not just easy and enjoyable to take part in, but to also make it a natural means for weaving environmental issues and sustainable living into the curriculum, whilst encouraging creativity and literacy at the same time.
The SCEMES Directory has always been oriented toward sustainability by being divided into regional categories and we are now developing a specific category for environmentally approved suppliers. In this way we are leading the field in providing opportunities for schools to achieve best value and sustainability.
It is this commitment to both schools and sustainable living that has inspired us to launch this competition, and it is our hope that the nations school will be inspired to create insightful poetry and insightful solutions.

Thanks to our Supporters

We are very grateful for the kind support of the National Primary headteachers Association (NPhA), the National Literacy Association (NLA), the National Association for the Teaching of English (NATE) and the Academi (the Welsh National Literature Promotion Agency and Society for Authors).

Contact

For more information contact our competition organiser, Helen Gordon, on 01691 664199 or email helen@scemes.net

ENDS