Estate
Transforming the education estate into healthy and productive school sites is the third action area in the DfE’s Sustainability and Climate Change Strategy
By being involved with the greening of the education estate, children and young people will learn sustainable behaviours and become agents of change in their communities.
Ultimately we all need to change our behaviour to help to tackle the climate emergency: from governments and industry leaders to young people in their communities. Schools are important places for learning and practising these behaviours and attitudes, which they can then take out to their communities and carry with them through their lives.
As part of a whole school approach, staff, students and the wider school or college community will practise behaviours such as saving energy, harvesting rainwater, composting, growing healthy food, using active travel wherever possible and creating diverse habitats for nature to thrive. Schools can become showcases for sustainable behaviours and children can become champions in their communities. In this way, schools are ideally placed as centres of the community, to lead by example in the transition to zero carbon communities.
It is important that all members of the school and college community are empowered to come up with their own ideas
“A green, sustainable education estate that is resilient to the impacts of climate change will normalise and inspire young people to live sustainable lives, with impact felt widely in their families and communities.”
Transforming school sites to become sustainable centres of the community has benefits for health, learning, engagement and inclusion. Physical health benefits will come from initiatives such as growing food onsite and reducing pollution to create cleaner air. Mental health benefits will come from children being a part of the solution to climate change and having opportunities to connect with nature on their school site.
Wilding the school site will have benefits for the health of all species and increase biodiversity too. Benefits for learning will come as children see how their health is connected to the health of all living things in their environment and how low carbon technologies can help to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.
Finally, improved opportunities for practical, real world and outdoor learning will improve engagement and attainment in learning. All these areas of learning can be taken by children and applied outside of the school, in their homes and community groups.
The UK government has legislated for the UK to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. If successful, this means that the UK will not emit more carbon dioxide than it captures. The UK is the first country to set legally binding carbon budgets. In the latest, Carbon Budget 6, the UK legislated to reduce emissions by 78% by 2035 compared to 1990 levels.
Alongside reducing emissions, The Environment Act (2021) reflects the need to tackle climate change through nature-based solutions to capture carbon from the atmosphere. The government will set statutory targets for air quality, biodiversity, water, resource efficiency and waste reduction, and a new target to reverse the decline in species abundance by the end of 2030. The act also strengthens the biodiversity duty on public authorities, including the Department for Education.
For student participation to have a meaningful impact on attitudes and behaviours, students will need to experience sustainable behaviours integrated across the complete operation of the whole site as part of everyday life. From reduce, reuse, recycle, composting, growing and rewilding, pupils will learn by living and experiencing the transformation of their site, and this will help them to envision the transformation of wider society.
By integrating actions for sustainability across the school campus, with opportunities to develop practical learning in context, these projects will have the greatest impact.
Greening the school curriculum and campus presents a unique opportunity to connect climate theory with climate action. In this toolkit there are simple and easy examples and strategies for doing this in the curriculum materials, the case studies and the community and culture sections.
Greening the education estate is also an opportunity for children and young people to develop the green skills that they will need to take with them when they leave school and enter the workplace.
Just like the education estate, every business will need to green its operations across the UK business estate and right through every supply chain. By involving students in the transformation of their school site, educators will be preparing them with transferable skills such as how to increase biodiversity, reduce the carbon intensity of energy and create a circular economy for resources.
Sustainability Teams and Estate Managers should prioritise the projects that will have the greatest impact on reducing the climate and ecological footprint of the school site, including rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Business Managers, Administrators and anyone involved in procurement should avoid companies that use greenwashing strategies to help market their products.
Greenwashing includes: Use of vague terms such as “eco-conscious” and “natural” to describe their products; green images such as mountains and plants on packaging; making one feature of their product eco-friendly when the rest of their range is damaging to nature; and even, making false claims such as that they use recyclable or biodegradable packaging even if they don’t. Schools can refer to the Green Claims Code Checklist to help them understand best practice and what should be avoided.
Guidance: The Green Claims Code checklist, published 20 September 2021, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/green-claims-code-making-environmental-claims/green-claims-and-your-business
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