The Magyarlak-Csöröt Secondary School, part of the Szentgotthárd Area School District near Hungary's western border with Austria, has been presented with the highest state acknowledgement for sustainability that may be awarded within the Hungarian public education system, the title of Eco-School. The plaque testifying to the honour was inaugurated in Magyarlak by Minister of State for Rural Development Zsolt V. Németh.

If we teach our children well and to do good then we can still do much to change the course of the future, Mr. Németh stressed at the inauguration ceremony, adding that environmental awareness is now a way of thinking and a way of life for the teachers and pupils of Magyarlak and Csörötök, and will remain so.

The school won the acknowledgement of the Ministry of Human Resources and the Ministry of Rural Development, the two institutions who decide on the presentation of the title, through several development programmes realised in recent years, such as its selective waste collection programme, school garden and bird-friendly garden, and through the results it has achieved within the Eco-School Programme.

The Minister of State expressed his pride for the fact that the agile and energetic students of the school are not only forming their own lives in an exemplary manner, but are perhaps to some extent also making up for the errors of previous generations.

The title of "Eco-School" was created in 2005 in the interests of encouraging the widest possible presence of environmental awareness and sustainable development within the public education system, with schools vying for the title each year as part of a competition related to the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development 2005-2004 programme.

Schools that are regularly involved in teaching the practical aspects of environmental awareness, sustainable consumption and development and who teach children to have a greater regard for the environment and their health may be acknowledged with the title. The winning schools receive a certificate proving that the institution is entitled to use the Eco-School title and logo for a period of three years.

(Press Office of the Ministry of Rural Development)