Guidance

Sustainability leadership and climate action plans in education

The Department for Education's (DfE) sustainability leadership and climate action plans initiative.

From:
Department for Education
Published
18 May 2023
Last updated
20 September 2024 — See all updates

Applies to England

Overview

A key initiative of DfE’s sustainability and climate change strategy for education is ‘sustainability leadership and climate action plans’.

The strategy states: “By 2025, all education settings will have nominated a sustainability lead and put in place a climate action plan”. This includes early years settings, schools, multi-academy trusts, colleges, and universities.

Sustainability leadership could be a group of people or an individual responsible for the development and implementation of a climate action plan.

A climate action plan is a detailed plan to enable your education setting, or trust, to progress or commence sustainability initiatives.

There are many organisations providing courses, products, and services to support an education setting’s approach to climate change. There are also many examples of excellent practice when it comes to sustainability and climate change in the education sector, and your individual setting or trust may already have a plan in place. Where this is the case we are not suggesting that you create a new plan.

Wherever you are on your sustainability journey, this non-statutory guidance and the support now available can help you get started or take the next step.

The department’s support for sustainability programmes is available to nurseries, schools and colleges and has three components:

  • Sustainability Support for Education: a digital hub of resources, services and tools to help you identify appropriate action to develop, or build on, your climate action plan, regardless of where you are on your sustainability journey
  • Climate Ambassador Programme: provides access to volunteer climate ambassadors and regional networks to support the development and delivery of impactful climate action plans
  • The National Education Nature Park: brings together all the land from across education settings into a vast virtual nature park. Participation in the Nature Park is a great way to add meaningful education, skills and biodiversity action to your plan. The Park provides curriculum-linked resources and practical activities to engage children and young people in nature and the improvement of their local environment

Why this is important

Our engagement has highlighted that settings and trusts have the greatest success in driving change where there is a holistic action plan that is supported by a leadership team with the authority, knowledge, and commitment to take it forward.

Ensuring you have clear leadership for sustainability in place, and a climate action plan, will help your setting to:

  • increase the confidence and expertise of your leadership team, staff, learners, and students in understanding climate change and how positive change can be achieved
  • create a culture that prioritises sustainability
  • share effective practice with other education settings and develop a peer-to-peer learning network
  • use data to identify and prioritise action
  • improve energy and water efficiency
  • calculate your carbon emissions and identify ways to reduce them
  • reduce operating costs
  • increase resilience and start adapting to the impacts of climate change
  • enhance biodiversity
  • help learners develop skills and knowledge which help them to contribute to sustainability and climate change in their lives and future jobs

Identifying your sustainability leadership structure

Though it is up to each individual setting or trust to decide the structure of their sustainability leadership team, best practice shows that change is delivered when driven by a diverse team of passionate individuals. It is important that both educational (for example, teaching staff) and operational (for example, estates management) expertise is brought to this team.

The presence of senior leaders from your organisation is critical for planning and implementation to be successful. They have the authority, capacity, and support to influence and lead strategic change within the setting.

You may choose to take an individual setting approach to building sustainability leadership, set it up across a multi-academy trust (if your setting is a member of one), or both.

A whole-setting approach

It is important that the whole education setting, or trust, is engaged so that planning becomes action.

Learners

Involving children, young people and learners is important in climate action planning.

Doing so can:

  • inspire their enthusiasm to help drive positive change
  • increase their practical knowledge of sustainability and climate change
  • give young people a sense of agency where anxiety stems from climate concerns
  • create a sense of pride in their education setting
  • enable them to share their knowledge and enthusiasm in their local communities
  • enable them to engage their parents, carers, and wider community in sustainability and climate change

Senior leadership team (SLT), governors, trustees and executive leaders

As senior decision makers, SLT and governors should support and drive your sustainable activity. They should:

  • provide the authority and support to drive and embed culture change
  • ensure climate change and sustainability feature on the agenda at key meetings
  • be responsible for succession planning, so that commitment to sustainability endures in the setting

Estates management

It is important your estates manager or management team inform your plan as they will have the knowledge required to enact more sustainable practices.

The performance management and sustainability section of the good estate management for schools guidance explains the role of estates management in encouraging sustainability and managing energy and water use.

For settings in further and higher education, a sector specific methodology for calculating carbon emissions, based on the greenhouse gas protocol, has been published by EAUC – the Environmental Association for Universities and Colleges. This follows collaboration with participants of the Platinum Jubilee Challenge, the Royal Anniversary Trust, the Association of Colleges, Colleges Scotland and Universities UK.

The standardised carbon emissions framework for further and higher education aims to:

  • give confidence to institutions who want to start monitoring
  • ensure transparency and comparability between institutions who report their emissions

Climate action plans

Creating a climate action plan will allow you to take a structured and strategic route toward ensuring your setting or trust is acting toward, and educating about, sustainability. You may choose to have a climate action plan that sits within an individual setting, or across a trust, or both.

A climate action plan should typically cover the following 4 areas, to align with DfE’s sustainability and climate change strategy:

  • decarbonisation, for example calculating and taking actions to reduce carbon emissions, such as becoming more energy efficient

  • adaptation and resilience, such as taking actions to reduce the risk of flooding and overheating

  • biodiversity, for example engaging with the National Education Nature Park

  • climate education and green careers, such as ensuring the education you provide gives knowledge-rich and comprehensive teaching about climate change, and that your teaching staff and lecturers feel supported to offer this

What is needed if you have already started

Your setting or trust may already have an environmental plan or sustainability strategy in place and may already be calculating its emissions. Equally you may also be working with one of the many excellent organisations who help education settings address sustainability.

Our approach is not designed to duplicate planning and action that has already taken place. We recognise that different settings are at different stages of this journey.

How to get started (if you have not already)

Visit Sustainability Support for Education to discover where to start or what you could do next. The site includes a range of resources, best practice, and tools to help you develop, or build on, your climate action plan, for all phases of education.

Participating in the National Education Nature Park is also a great step on your journey – providing opportunities for learning about climate, nature and how to increase biodiversity on your site.

Be inspired by others. The following resources, organised by sector, demonstrate how some education settings have started their journeys. They highlight some of the tools already available. This is just a small selection of examples. Many more settings are also making excellent progress.

All settings

Early years settings

Schools

Multi-academy trusts

Further education settings

Higher education settings

Share your sustainability journey

We are collecting case studies for use in communications and guidance as we further develop our support.

If you would like to share your experience with others, please send a live website link to your sustainability strategy or send a written submission to DfE’s Sustainability and Climate Change Unit: dfe.sustainability@education.gov.uk

Updates to this page

Published 18 May 2023
Last updated 20 September 2024 + show all updates

  1. Updated with further information on the support available to nurseries, schools and colleges.

  2. Updated with support resources now available to nurseries, schools and colleges.

  3. Added 'United Learning Trust’s sustainability journey' to the 'Multi-academy trusts' section.

  4. First published.

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