School climate action guide

The DfE strategy states that “By 2025, all education settings will have nominated a sustainability lead and put in place a climate action plan”.

It also sets a target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 75% by 2037 across all education settings.

By creating a climate action plan, your school is taking the important first step to reach this target. It will also offer your school a number of other benefits.

As part of the DfE requirements, all school climate action plans must include at least one action from these four key areas:

There are also plenty of other things your school can do and other areas where you can make a change. Many of these areas also overlap.

This guide and template will help schools to create a meaningful action plan that fulfils the DfE requirements for education settings. It does this by combining helpful guidance in one place and offering practical tips on how to carry out the plan.

For a successful climate action plan you will need to assemble and engage a diverse team. Appointing a sustainability lead who can help to coordinate is an important first step. It is also one of the DfE’s requirements. Sustainability leadership could be one person or a group of people. The lead person or group should have responsibility for the development and implementation of your climate action plan.

Climate change goals rely on contributions from:

Working together will help embed your climate action plan. It will also help to successfully incorporate these changes within your school.

How to use this guide

To get started, please refer to the climate action plan template.

The template is split into different columns that you should fill in with information about the action you are intending to take.

To help you complete the template, it includes examples of action plan goals and the corresponding steps to achieve them. For ease, these examples have been divided by theme. The examples provided are to help inspire and generate ideas on the opportunities for your school. The list is not exhaustive. If you like the ideas and are committed to carrying them out, feel free to copy the information straight into your action plan.

Once you have completed your climate action plan we recommend you publish it on your school's website. We also recommend you review how you are getting on with delivering your plan once a year and update it as goals are met. This is a good opportunity to get pupils involved in this process.

A useful first step is knowing what currently happens at your school. This means knowing your school’s carbon emissions. It also means knowing how sustainably it operates at the moment. Understanding this context is important to make meaningful changes through your climate action plan.

You can start by collecting baseline data. This should include:

This baseline data can be used to calculate how much carbon is being emitted by the school and where you can reduce it.

This will show you the emissions which your daily activities and business operations create. From this, your school can gain a clearer understanding of its impact on the planet.

In the climate action plan template, you can find example actions to establish your school’s baseline. You can also find information on how to carry out those actions.

A healthy ecosystem is one with a rich variety of habitat, plants, and species. This is what is meant by biodiversity. Healthy ecosystems help tackle climate change and help us be more resilient to the effects of climate change.

Biodiversity can be increased by:

Increasing biodiversity within schools has many additional benefits. Green spaces offer learning opportunities like getting pupils and staff outside for lessons. Growing plants and being involved in gardening is proven to help confidence for students and increase skills and knowledge. Access to green space can also have a positive impact on the wellbeing and mental health of students and staff.

Climate education is vital for tackling climate change. Teaching young people about the causes and effects of climate change creates motivated people who are inspired to act.

Children play a key role in helping to share knowledge and change behaviours in communities. Participation and motivation from young people can help bring about change through climate work. Helping young people improve their understanding of climate change results in adults who are engaged and take action.

Climate change is a part of the national curriculum for science and geography. However, it affects all areas of all our lives so it should not be limited to just these subjects. This is particularly important as Geography is no longer compulsory beyond Key Stage 3. Student feedback has also shown an eagerness to learn more about climate change beyond the confines of the curriculum. There are a number of ways climate can be embedded easily in other subjects. Check out our resource section for some ideas.

Green careers relate to jobs and career pathways within areas tackling climate change. As we work towards our net zero goals, there are more opportunities and roles within this field. Green skills are vital, and demand for them is increasing. This is because new green technologies are being developed and more sustainable practices are being adopted throughout society. Green skills can be defined as “the knowledge, abilities, values and attitudes needed to live in, develop and support a society which reduces the impact of human activity on the environment.” Green careers and education can help young people prepare for roles in sustainability.

The transition to a carbon neutral society will see a need for more green skills in a number of sectors. Such as:

• power generation
• industry
• construction
• water
• waste and resources

To meet this demand, education and vocational pathways need to be advertised and supported. A greater understanding of the roles and opportunities is needed both amongst students and educators to help guide students. 

Active and sustainable travel is about making journeys in ways that are healthier and more environmentally friendly. This could be through walking, wheeling and cycling or by taking public transport.

Being more active and sustainable for school journeys can have lots of benefits for pupils, parents, local residents and schools - such as reducing travel time and costs, improving health and wellbeing, improving air quality, improving road safety outside schools and reducing complaints.

Schools have an important role to play in active and sustainable travel by helping to provide the skills and improving the confidence of students and their care-givers. With these actions schools can help to change travel behaviour, increase road safety and reduce congestion outside of schools.

Some quick wins that your school could do:

• Take up the support offered by our Road Safety Education Team. Visit the Council's website for more information.
  
• Sign up for free Bikeability training. Visit the Bikeright website for more information.
• Sign up for Let's Walk, a child pedestrian training programme coordinated by the Council's Road Safety team for year 3 and 4 children.
• Take part in Living Streets WOW initiative (the walk to school challenge). WOW is a year-round, pupil-let initiative where children self-report how they get to school every day using the interactive WOW Travel Tracker. Find out more on our here.
• Install secure scooter and bike racks so pupils feel safe leaving their property on site.
• Explore setting up a park and stride scheme, where families who live further away from school can park further away from the school and walk in.
• Join in with national campaigns to encourage active travel such as Walk to School and Bike Week.
• Promote travel plans – create an action plan, log the actions and monitor changes in how pupils travel by using Modeshift STARS.
  

For information on local active transport initiatives please contact: roadsafety@cheshirewestandchester.gov.uk

Watch a short video explaining how the WOW initiative by Living Streets works.

Air quality is a measure of how much pollution is in the air. Pollution has a huge impact on our health. Children are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of low air quality as well as those with existing heart and respiratory conditions. For children, poor air quality can lead to an increase of respiratory and heart conditions. It can also affect brain and lung development.

Air quality can be improved by making actions that relate to climate change. This includes: