Ocean Champions School Project & Awards

The Ocean Champion School Awards recognise the effort, commitment and collaboration of school teachers, children, with their local community, in the successfully completing a marine-themed Healthy Ocean School project.

The awards include a certificate for the winners of each category and a special designed plaque for the national winner. The categories include:

Marine Steam School Project
Ocean Literacy Creative School Project
SDGs & The Ocean School Project
Marine Outdoor School Project

For more information about becoming an Explorers Ocean Champion School download the Explorers Ocean Champion Awards Top Tips for Submitting an Application. It’s as easy as one + two + three!

Check out the Explorers Ocean Champions highlights below.

Dooagh National School, Achill, Co Mayo, is the winner of the Explorers Ocean Champion School National Award 2023-2024 for their Healthy Ocean project ‘The Basking Sharks’.

Dooagh National School’s project highlighted how important basking sharks are to Achill and Ireland. The primary school students worked together to create giant Basking Shark sculptures on the seashore and art sculptures from marine litter. Over the past year, the students have been involved in beach cleans, visited the Marine Institute’s Newport Research Facility, worked with artists, learnt about the work of shark experts and scientists from the Irish Basking Shark Group, produced e-books, and have campaigned to erect a sign at Keem Bay to advise boaters and swimmers about respecting this species. They also interviewed Mr Brian McNeil, one of the last living connections to the basking shark fishing during that era.

Twenty-eight coastal schools participated in this year's competition, creating healthy ocean school projects based on themes including Marine STEAM, Ocean literacy, SDGs and the Ocean, and Marine Outdoor Education.

The eight winning schools all provided outstanding efforts around the coast of Ireland. Each of the schools set out to use marine themes in the curriculum, including the whole school in the learning experience. Those that stood out also engaged with their wider community to make a positive difference by raising awareness about the impact the ocean has on our lives and the impact we have on the ocean, and creating actions for change.

Scoil Chaitríona Junior, Renmore, Galway, was crowned the national winner of the Explorers Ocean Champion School Awards 2023 for their Healthy Ocean project, ‘Caring for our Ocean’.

They applied marine themes of environmental care, cleaning up litter, and looking after the animals in the ocean across many different subjects from the sciences through to music and the arts, throughout the year. They shared stories about the ocean with a primary school in France, performed at the Marino Institute of Further Education and at the Féile Scoildrámaíochta inter-school drama competition.

Each school that took part in the Healthy Ocean School Projects also showed incredible initiative by using cross-curricular content in support of the Primary School Curriculum Framework (2023). They introduced key competencies and skills for children’s learning and the projects incorporated thematic learning showing how a healthy ocean is relevant to our daily life.

Scoil Cholmchille, Malin, Co. Donegal won the first national Ocean Champion Award in 2022 for their project that focused on the value of marine heritage and traditional boats in Ireland.

The Explorers Ocean Champions 2021-2022 Awards Films highlight the children’s work, comments from teachers and the outreach team, as well as guests who attended the school awards.

Explorers Outreach in Schools