The Department for Education is mandating that all schools in England have a designated sustainability lead and a climate action plan in place by the end of 2025.
We were joined on the line by Gemma Bailey, Hub Manager for Climate Ambassador South East to talk about what this means for Kent.
We were joined on the line by Gemma Bailey, Hub Manager for Climate Ambassador South East to talk about what this means for Kent.
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00:00The Department of Education is implementing a sustainability strategy requiring all education settings to have a designated sustainability lead and a climate action plan in place by the end of the year.
00:12These leads will be responsible for developing and implementing these plans, which aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prepare young people for a world impacted by climate change.
00:22Tell us more. We're joined on the line by Gemma Bailey, Hub Manager for Climate Ambassador South East. Gemma, thank you so much for joining us at this early hour.
00:31First of all, tell us about the strategy and what it means for schools here in Kent.
00:36Good morning. Thank you so much for having me today.
00:40Today. Yes. So as you just mentioned, back in 2022, the Department for Education published their sustainability and climate change strategy.
00:52The strategy aims for, like you say, all education settings to have a sustainability lead and climate action plan in place by the end of this year.
00:59And the primary goal of this is ultimately to try and get schools starting to take action within sustainability.
01:10The climate action plan should cover four areas. So decarbonisation, adaptation and resilience, biodiversity and climate education and green careers.
01:18And ultimately, the aim of this is that we can help to start move schools along to, like you say, decarbonise and meet net zero.
01:29But alongside that, actually inspire, enable and empower young people to feel like they understand what is going on in the world.
01:37But not just that, actually, that they can also understand how they can make small changes to make a difference as well.
01:43And how will this be enforced? How do we know that all schools will follow this?
01:48So with regard to the enforcement, the Department for Education will not be, or say, asking climate action plans to be uploaded anywhere and to be assessed in that way.
02:02It is more of a soft rollout of the kind of strategy and the enforcement of climate action plans at the minute.
02:10That could change. We don't know. Obviously, I'm working for a programme that support the strategy, but we aren't sure whether Department for Education will take this.
02:18But I would say one thing with climate action planning and with taking any sort of action within sustainability, there are multiple co-benefits to it as well.
02:28For example, where you touched on decarbonising and meeting net zero, that comes with lower energy bills and therefore lower running costs.
02:37There's a lot of money to be saved as well here. But as well as that, if we're looking at the students and inspiring and enabling and empowering young people,
02:44this also contributes to hopefully improving their well-being as well.
02:48So there's multiple co-benefits to think about when taking climate action.
02:52And so the climate action plans, I would say, although, yes, the Department for Education are asking education settings to do this and take this step.
02:59Also, the way settings should look at it is that there are also co-benefits to taking these actions.
03:04So, Gemma, are there repercussions if a school doesn't nominate a sustainability lead or doesn't have an action plan?
03:13Are there any repercussions there?
03:17No. Schools do not need to worry.
03:19So this is not, like I say, something that is going to be added, for example, to an off-step framework.
03:25This is a soft rollout of climate action plans and sustainability leads.
03:31What have you heard from schools in terms of how important they feel climate action is, as well as their students?
03:36Well, I think a lot of it within schools at the minute is coming from students and coming from teachers and senior leadership teams hearing more and more from their students that they want to see changes within the schools related to sustainability and environmental actions, which is fantastic.
03:55At the same time, I would say we've got a lot of education settings that are coming forward to us and saying, look, we are noticing that this school over here has started to make some fantastic changes and it's been amazing for the students, but also incredible for the school's kind of bills and things like that.
04:13Therefore, we want to start making some changes as well.
04:15So the schools, I would say, that have taken a lot of action so far are probably the kind of ones that were potentially already taking some action in this area.
04:25We're now largely, when I'm working, speaking to kind of a middle group of education settings that maybe haven't done loads on this so far, maybe have, for example, an eco club or a gardening club, have a little bit of an outside growing space, something like that.
04:39But it's now starting to encourage them to move and look into this wider scheme of work, not just focusing on one area, ultimately.
04:48So it's a real mixed bag.
04:50And we obviously spoke at the Green School Awards last year, which celebrated, you know, some of those schools in Kent that have taken that action and are doing amazing things.
05:01And they are all across the county, which, you know, it should be said.
05:05For you, you know, talking to those sort of that middle group of schools and trying to get those schools that, you know, might be umming and ahhing about it.
05:13What are some of the challenges and how are you trying to overcome that with those schools?
05:17Because I can imagine there's already a lot of pressures on teachers as there is and schools and students as is.
05:25So how are you navigating all of those challenges to get people on board?
05:29Yeah, so there are a lot of challenges and barriers to taking action within education settings.
05:36One that we are finding, I mean, I'm sure you can imagine that there is time and money as key problems and key barriers.
05:43But another one that we are finding more and more is expertise as well.
05:47Obviously, teachers and senior leadership teams within education settings, they have not come into this role to be sustainability experts.
05:54And so that is where a program like ours, which is called the Climate Ambassadors Scheme, we are mobilizing and supporting education settings to help them act on climate change using skilled volunteers.
06:04So what we do is we actually partner up volunteers who work already in the environmental space.
06:11So, for example, they might be a sustainability consultant and they volunteer some of their time to help support education settings to advance in this agenda.