Climate Change within the Education Sector

The race to net zero is really gathering pace now. Dinner table conversations are changing from masks and vaccines to electric cars, green energy and everything related to climate change.

One of the big questions in my mind is how can schools support this conversation given that they are the third largest publicly funded sector accounting for more than 10% of government spend by function (after social protection and health).

Schools have demonstrated their role as a key player in supporting society through the pandemic but can they now do the same for climate change?

The DfE have now issued their  draft strategy for the education and children’s services systems which goes some way to address the sustainability and climate issues facing the sector, but this is really just the start, there is so much more to do.

This is such a big topic it is impossible to consider everything to do with climate change in one blog. So instead I just want to consider some of the key aspects that impact on the school sector. I have set this out below in 3 key areas:

Teaching climate change and preparing our pupils for the jobs of the future

There are many schools that have already built climate change into their curriculum. However, much of this will only be high level and effectively only scratching the surface of an extremely complex and wide ranging subject.

Talking to my colleagues who have recently left education, many of them are passionate about the subject, but have schools given them the education they want and need in this topic?

The government issued it’s industrial decarbonisation strategy in March this year and education is expected to play a key role in giving pupils the skills to do the new jobs that will be required to support the changes in technology and the way we live. Schools and the wider education sector need to be able to deliver on this strategy.

The target of getting to net zero will mean new jobs will be created in carbon free industries. Many of these new jobs will be in energy generation and transportation. We will no longer rely on coal plants or oil refineries and there will be a focus on sectors adapting to net zero through research and new technology.

Our pupils need to be given the right education to do these jobs. We are already hearing that there are not enough engineers for the electric car industry.

Climate change risk management

Whilst there are still more maintained schools than academies, the number of pupils in an academy is more than 50% (80% of secondary schools are academies - September 2021). With this dual system we have two very different types of governance and hence risk management.

• As the accountable body for maintained schools, each local authority is responsible for risk management in its schools.
• Academy Trusts however, are all separate legal entities and hence are responsible for their own risk management. As the academy sector has developed, the risk management has become more sophisticated in line with the requirements of the Academy Trust Handbook. Risk management covers the full operations and activities of the Trust and hence climate change (ATH 2.38)

So whilst the Local Authority will monitor climate change risk for their schools, it is up to the Trustees to do this for their Academy Trust. There will be many aspects of climate change that need to be considered including:

• The built environment (heating, cooling, ventilation, flooding, melting tarmac, outdoor shade, drought; nearly half of schools are already at significant flood risk according to  Future-Flooding-Main-Report-Sayers-1.pdf (ukclimaterisk.org))
• Schools meals (availability of food, storing food -chilled, demand for more vegetables, adapting menus for hot/cold days, removal of gas cookers)
• Pupil’s health (asthma, mental health, heat exhaustion,
• Timetabling (impact on curriculum planning for outdoor activities, lunch and after school clubs)
• School transport (electric minibuses and buses, failure of public transport infrastructure – melting railway tracks)

This is not an exhaustive list, many more issues will surface as climate change evolves. As this is such a complex area it is likely that Academy trusts will need help to navigate their way through this developing risk.

Helping the government achieve its strategy of being net zero by 2050

Whilst the school sector will have to make potentially significant changes to the way schools operate due to climate change, helping the government reach net zero is an even bigger ask. The draft strategy sets out how the DfE expects the sector to support the government.

However, the academy sector in particular has a specific challenge with this due to the regularity framework within which they operate (the Academy Trust Handbook). The immediate dilemma that needs to be addressed is the conflict of ‘doing the right thing’ to support the government which will in many instances conflict with the regularity requirement of achieving ‘value for money’. The Department for Education (DfE) will need to tackle this head on and give urgent guidance to the academy sector.

Once this conflict has been addressed the government will then need to include the academy sector in its procurement initiatives to ensure net zero is fully embraced.

Through my discussions with various academies, it is clear that there is a huge range of approaches to climate change ranging from academies with a target of being net zero by 2030 through to academies that have not yet had a conversation about climate change at board level and have therefore not yet started on their journey. There is also already a lot of lesson material available to support climate change in the curriculum, although obviously I can’t vouch for the quality of the content. It naturally fits into a wide range of subject areas, but this needs planning to ensure it is done well and again the DfE have considered this in their draft strategy.

One thing is for sure, the school sector needs to embrace the initiatives being proposed by government to ensure it is playing its part in preparing the world for our children’s future.

So my call to action is for the government to support schools in developing the curriculum on climate change (as it has now promised), to help in assessing the full risk of climate change and to amend the regulatory framework to enable academies to ‘do the right thing’.