Schools and sustainability – How to start making a change
Georgina Beard and Elena Lengthorn share practical ways you can help your school reduce its carbon footprint – and why you deserve more support to make it happen…
- by Georgina Beard & Elena Longthorn
- Maths teacher & climate ambassador; senior lecturer in teacher education
Why is school sustainability so important? Well, our lives are dedicated to developing our students and equipping them for their futures. Right now, science tells us that their future is changing rapidly, yet our education system is not.
Students are witnessing climate change impacts around the world. In recent years, millions have boldly skipped school and taken to the streets in protest, wanting those in power to hear their voices.
As teachers, this is an ongoing situation that we can’t afford to ignore.
The DfE’s review, ‘Impact of UK climate change risk on the delivery of education’ explored how climate change risk could impact upon education delivery. It identified three key risks – flooding, water scarcity and overheating.
Our education system is part of the problem. As educators, we have a responsibility and opportunity to mitigate and adapt what we do in response.
What are schools’ biggest sustainability hurdles?
Let’s start by considering what aspects of our schools’ operations are the most environmentally damaging.
Unfortunately, however, when it comes to what schools do and the resources they require, there are few aspects that aren’t damaging. Some of the most obvious considerations include:
- the transport methods students use to get to school
- rising energy costs
- outdated buildings
Schools are increasingly experiencing flooding impacts and extreme heat days. Then there’s the issue of waste, with some 22kg of waste produced per year, per secondary pupil. According to the Schools Sustainability Guide, primary pupils clock up an even worse 45kg.
Our schools therefore shoulder some responsibility for what’s happening – but can also seize the opportunity to do something about it.
Sustainability goals
Lack of available time and resources remains a challenge, of course. With so many competing issues placing a heavy burden on educators and education leaders, deciding where to allocate those resources is a tremendously difficult balancing act.
In practice, the decision to do something often comes down to individual schools or staff members simply taking an interest.
In 2015, 193 UN member states, including the UK, signed up to the Sustainable Development Goals. Goal 4 cites ‘quality education’, stating that “Education is the key that will allow many other SDGs to be achieved”.
Eight years later, the DfE produced a ‘Sustainability and Climate Change Strategy’ for education. It recently re-committed to the introduction of a new Natural History GCSE qualification.
Yet while the DfE strategy does propose that schools take some adaptive actions, it stops short of pledging any additional funding, recommending that schools dedicate time to their implementation, and having the strategy’s progress be reviewed by Ofsted.
As such, delivery of the DfE’s Sustainability and Climate Change Strategy is broadly seen as a ‘Nice to do’, rather than an essential duty.
Leading the culture shift
For schools on a sustainability journey, the process of identifying practical actions is just the start. Before long, a much larger challenge emerges – that related to culture.
While most individuals will recognise a need for change, actually delivering it can be a big hurdle.
Engaging and motivating your entire school around sustainability efforts will entail a huge culture shift. This should ideally be led from the top.
This won’t just amount to asking staff to change their photocopying habits. Rather it’s about adapting their core practice and routines. In some instances, this could have the potential to almost come across as a personal slight.
In any case, there will be many senior leaders who are, understandably, cautious at the idea of changing practice in a way that’s possibly liable to impact upon all pupils, all at once.
How to start improving your school’s sustainability
It may surprise you to learn, however, that navigating the green transition in schools isn’t the alien process people often make it out to be.
The DfE strategy begins by advising all schools to appoint a ‘sustainability leader’. They will then draw up a climate action plan for the remainder of the year. They can turn to the Sustainability Support for Education website for advice and assistance, if needed.
Alongside this, there’s a network of Climate Ambassadors. Schools can reach out to these people for further guidance, information, resources and mentoring.
A useful template, available from climateactionplan.org.uk, can assist you with creating an individual climate action plan based upon your school’s particular needs and context. You can then re-upload the finished action plan to the website to track progress over time.
The strategy consists of four pillars. You should ideally reflect these in your climate action plan.
School sustainability resources
To help get things moving, you can turn to a range of different organisations for helpful information and suggestions – including the following:
Curriculum
By making just a few small tweaks to the existing curriculum, schools can potentially deliver some great outcomes with respect to climate education.
The student-led climate education campaign, Teach the Future, uses what it calls a ‘tracked changes’ methodology. This is combined with a set of guiding principles to envisage what a new, more sustainability-informed curriculum might look like.
Net zero
Let’s Go Zero is a national campaign calling for all education settings be zero carbon by 2030. Its regional reps will help you take the steps necessary to reduce your school’s carbon emissions. You can monitor your progress with a carbon emissions calculator available from Eco Schools.
Procurement
Getting your facilities teams on board is a great place to start. The UKSSN Operations group – part of the UK Schools Sustainability Network – is run by SBLs, estate managers, governors and volunteers. It can provide you with great advice and access to a wide support network.
Biodiversity
The recently opened National Education Nature Park programme enables schools to better engage with vibrant biodiversity sites situated in their school’s local area.
Schools can log their geographical location, track changes and find plenty of helpful resources for getting pupils more involved and knowledgeable about the natural wonders to be found on their own doorstep.
What are the government’s responsibilities?
While many school leaders are increasingly mindful of their school’s environmental impact, and are taking steps towards mitigating those effects, the biggest barrier is still the same – a lack of policy.
Without concrete policy imposed at national level, these vital measures will continue to be merely optional.
Schools remain money-poor and time-poor, with the result that their energies will be naturally concentrated first and foremost on the government priorities of the day.
Ensuring that matters of environmental awareness and sustainability become a key feature of inspections and other accountability systems is crucial.
Until the government recognises this, headteachers must use their power to enable all staff to prioritise environmentally-friendly choices.
Case study: The Chase School, Malvern
Sarah Dukes, English teacher and sustainability leader at The Chase School in Malvern, Worcestershire, recalls how the school’s waste disposal procedures changed in response to student demand…
In 2019, a group of pupils concerned about paper waste asked about our school’s recycling policy – and The Chase Eco Committee was born.
For our first mission, pupils investigated the potential for our recycling to expand beyond just paper, to include cardboard, cans, aerosol containers, glass and plastic.
Recycling bins with newly designed labels were placed in classrooms, along with themed posters, while the Committee delivered school assemblies. The local recycling centre even ran virtual workshops for us during tutor time.
Our students wanted to reduce the school’s use of non-recyclable plastics, energy and water consumption, whilst encouraging greater use of sustainable transport and planting more trees.
‘Greening up’
Since then, we’ve also increased our volume of working solar panels; banned single-use plastic drinks; enriched our green spaces by planting new trees and maintained our sedum roof.
We’ve also expanded our science garden and endeavoured to improve the school’s air quality. Our lighting systems have been linked to proximity sensors, and we’ve installed a new set of EVC chargers.
Thanks in part to our newly established ‘sustainability’ staff steering group, all job descriptions posted by the school now include as a ‘desirable’ trait a willingness from candidates to help support our Climate Emergency pledge.
This has helped to attract interest from a cleaning company with a commitment to reducing waste, and shown how ‘greening up’ school operations can help to save money.
We’ve embedded nature connectedness and climate awareness across subjects, adapting lessons and creating new units of work.
Challenges
We’ve faced some challenges stemming from changes in staff, leadership and across wider society. A top-down push for booklets presented a struggle when trying to reduce our paper consumption.
A request to plant more free Woodland Trust trees was rejected, due to lack of space. The inbuilt obsolescence of some hardware and software used across the school has resulted in increased volumes of electronic waste.
A core priority
The school’s passionate sustainability lead, eco committee and staff steering group understand that sustainability and broader environmental concerns must become a core priority for everything taking place in school – from the planning and delivery of lessons, to how resources are deployed, behaviour is managed and attitudes are talked about.
Our students are encouraged to carefully consider their own and others’ methods for getting to school and work, as well as how sustainable our choices are when it comes to what we eat for lunch.
Georgina Beard is a secondary maths teacher and climate ambassador; Elena Lengthorn is a senior lecturer in teacher education.
