The 4 sustainability pillars
The strategy outlines a vision of school sustainability across 4 pillars and suggests actions your schools can take under that pillar.
Taking action and making sustainability changes within your school can have a wide variety of positive impacts for both your school community and the environment. There are often funding, grant and other financing opportunities that your school can apply for, which may support the implementation of your climate action plan.
The four sustainability pillars
Climate education and Green Careers
Excellence in education and skills: Preparing all young people for a world impacted by climate change through learning and practical experience.
- Conduct an audit of your school’s core subjects’ promotion of climate education using these existing curriculum mapping resources as a guide
- At primary level, embed the teaching/ reading of texts that center climate change/ sustainability using this list
- Check if you are eligible for any of these funding opportunities relating to outdoor education
- Provide whole-school CPD time (including to each department) to rewrite unit plans, based on a curriculum audit
- Purchase a new set of texts to teach at KS3 that explicitly engage with climate change or sustainability (e.g. in English, choose a fiction text engaging with the theme of sustainability)
- Organise in-house CPD for your estates team on sustainable construction with The Green Register of Construction Professionals
- Work with Green Schools Project to run CPD sessions for climate education integration into your curriculum
- Promote more accurate understandings/ dispel myths of green careers by disseminating this poster around school e.g. on computer displays/ during tutor time
- Use resources from Youth Employment UK to promote awareness of Green Careers in assemblies, tutor time, or PSHE subject time
- Use resources from WWF to promote more accurate understandings/ dispel myths about climate change e.g. on computer displays/ during tutor time, in assemblies, or PSHE subject time
- Sign up for one of Transport for London’s employability support programme events
- Create a STEM project and apply for royal society grant
- Organise school trips to a nearby woodland
Biodiversity
A better environment for future generations: enhancing biodiversity, imporiving air quality and increasing access tt, and connection with, nature in and around education and care setting.
- Register with nature parks and map your site
- Build bird and bat boxes - Swift Project
- Build bird and butterfly feeders
- Make a bug hotel / RHS Campaign for School Gardening
- Sponsor a Tree through Trees for Streets
- Participate in No Mow May
- Build a pond towards which surface runoff can be directed, as well as regulate local temperature. Add plants to attract wildlife
- Use the Woodland Trust’s online tool to plan how you can plant trees on your site
- Work with Father Nature to reimagine your school’s outdoor space
- Sponsor a tree in and around your school
- Reach out to local volunteering groups, such as Friends of Parks, or Action for Silk Stream to look for opportunities to collaborate together, perhaps through a visit, workshop, or talk.
- Checkout some of the case studies in the London school air quality toolkit
- Add air purifying indoor plants for classrooms
- Open windows to ventilate your school to improve indoor air quality
- Create a green barrier between school grounds and adjacent roads
- Create a bespoke green wall on site
- Join Barnet’s Anti-idling campaign
- Use portable air quality monitors to learn about which areas to focus on. Children could carry them on their way to school and learn more about data.
- Coordinate and promote a walking bus with parents to reduce congestion around your school
- Organise a school trip to a nature reserve
- Encourage parents and carers to join the London Urban Nature Club
- Organise a farm tour or workshop at S Grow
- Organise a Wildlife Trust school session
- Explore your site’s biodiversity with learners
- Check out the WWF biodiversity teaching toolkit
- Check out opportunities to connect children to nature on site or locally with ecoactive
- Check out the nature parks green skills page
- Organise a local litter pick
Adaptation and Resilience
Resilience to climate change: adapting our education and care buildings and system to prepare effects of climate change.
- Add Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) such as rain planters to filter and slow flow of rainwater from roofs
- Apply to get free urban trees with the Woodland Trust, helping with shade and reducing flood risk
- Use the Woodland Trust’s online tool to plan how you can plant trees on your site
- Create a bespoke green wall on site
- Work with RAFT to retrofit buildings to increase thermal massing (i.e. ability to absorb, store and release heat)
- Replace tarmac with permeable surfaces (e.g. grasscrete or permeable tarmac)
- Install rainwater harvesting tank to reduce reliance on external mains water supply
- Build a pond towards which surface runoff can be directed, as well as regulate local temperature
- Train staff on DfE’s hot weather guidance
- Develop a plan for what changes your school will make to keep students safe during extreme heat using the Hammersmith and Fulham guidance
- Create a flooding plan using guidance for estates managers
Decarbonisation
NetZero: Reducing direct and indirect emissions from education buildings, driving innovation to meet Barnets NetZero targets and providing opportunities for children and young people to engage practically in the transition to NetZero.
- Read through the Catapult energy system guide
- Join energy sparks for bespoke audits, training and actions to reduce energy usage
- Speak to staff in your school who might have access to information sources about your school’s energy use and collate as much information as you can
- Understand how school greenhouse gas emissions work and meet with your school’s estate team and/or senior leadership to identify potential reduction areas
- Participate in national Switch Off Fortnight
- Conduct a full building audit
- Consider solar energy on your roof with Solar for School’s paneliser tool
- Fit taps with aerators/low flow devices to reduce flow of water by up to 50%
- Consider purchasing sustainably sourced/recycled resources. e.g paper
- Implement printing limits for all students and staff
- Check if your school received additional school condition allocations (SCA) for energy efficiency. If this funding is unspent, it can be used for decarbonisation planning
- Check if you are eligible to apply for the Conditions Improvement Fund
- Reduce business travel and make all meetings online where possible
- Encourage staff and students to reduce car usage (where possible) by encouraging active travel methods
- Conduct a survey with parents and staff to gather data on your school community’s commute; use this data to create a School Travel Plan
- Join Transport for London’s Travel for Life programme and use their free resources to help implement your School Travel Plan
- Apply for the Workplace Charging Scheme (a grant for state-funded education institutes to provide support towards the costs of the purchase, installation and infrastructure of electric vehicle chargepoints)
- School Street
- Perform an audit of current procurement suppliers and identify those with ISO14001 certification – and consider if a change in current procurement is required (e.g. reducing red meat, or implementing seasonal menus)
- Implement composting of food waste and using the compost in other ways, e.g. as fertiliser on wild spaces or growing patches
- Consider introducing a meat-free day