Three things the Department for Education is doing to tackle climate change - and create 'greener' schools

• The UK is aiming to reach net zero emissions by 2050 - now just 25 years away
• The Department for Education is making sure schools play their part
• Schools will need to have their own ‘climate action’ plans by this year
• Thousands of schoolchildren are also playing their part and protecting biodiversity through a novel programme

Every industry, and every sector has its own part to play in reducing emissions - and striving for a greener future.

It’s no secret that the planet is in trouble, with 2024 holding the dubious honour of being the hottest year on record, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, while also being the first year to exceed 1.5C above pre-industrial levels - considered to be a dangerous tipping point. At the same time, nature in Britain is also in crisis, with the most recent State of Nature report finding that nearly one in six of more than ten thousand species assessed were at risk of disappearing from the British Isles.

The UK Government is pushing for the whole country to be net zero emissions by 2050. Many schools are already doing their part, by making sure their pupils receive a robust climate and nature education.

But the Department for Education is also taking its own steps to make education in general more green. It recently published a new update on what it was doing in schools both old and new.

Here are three of the key things it’s doing to help schools shave down their carbon footprint:

1. Inspiring young people to connect with nature

The National Education Nature Park programme, led by the Natural History Museum, launched in October 2023 - and has been running for a little over a year now. In that time, children at more than 4,000 schools, nurseries, and colleges across every region of England have been busy building green walls, digging ponds and growing pollinator-friendly plants.

The programme brings together schools from across the country to create a ‘virtual nature park’, inspiring young people to both connect with nature, and understand their own role in climate change. It puts biodiversity into their hands, helping classes to turn “their schools’ grey spaces green”.

“Every small act makes a big impact, and by monitoring wildlife on their sites and uploading their findings, young people can see the collective difference they are making,” the Department wrote. And it’s a big difference, with young people mapping some two million square-metres of habitats across the education estate - the size of 1,600 Olympic swimming pools.

“These young people’s efforts are also set to leave a legacy for our understanding of urban habitats. The data they upload to our system will be used by scientists at the Natural History Museum for research into nature recovery.”

2. Supporting schools to slash emissions

The DfE said it was “committed to a whole system approach to embedding sustainability through the education system”. As part of its Climate and Sustainability Strategy, all schools should be working towards implementing their own Climate Action Plans by the end of 2025.

These are plans to help schools become more sustainable, in a way that is unique and manageable for them and their circumstances. “These plans will allow the education sector to focus on the skills it needs to impact climate change with free support to do this, available online via the Sustainability Support for Education online service. This site ensures our schools are relying on trusted information.”

For schools that needed a little more help, the Climate Ambassadors program - supported by Let’s Go Zero Climate Advisers - was able to lend its expertise, as well as on-the-ground help.

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3. Building greener schools

Since 2021, the Department for Education said it had been designing new schools that were low energy, more adaptable to climate change, and Net Zero by design. On top of that, more UK-grown timber was now being used in construction - to help reduce the carbon footprint of new builds.

In 2023, the Department delivered the UK’s first biophilic school. St Mary’s Voluntary Catholic Academy, in Darley Abbey, Derby, was destroyed in a 2020 arson attack, the BBC reports. It was rebuilt with nature integrated into its school environment, with hundreds of trees, plants and flowers in and out of the classroom, outdoor learning spaces, and floor-to-ceiling windows so students can take in nature - all aimed at boosting both their physical and mental health.

A secondary school designed using biophilic principles is also currently in the works, but is still in the early stages of development.

For existing schools, DfE said that it was supporting them to tackle energy efficiency, signposting them to government-wide schemes like the Workplace Charging Scheme for EV charging points, and helping to improve the ways they combat the effects of climate change.

This included piloting different measures to improve schools’ ability to withstand some of its more severe impacts, from heatwaves, to high-risk flooding.

To find out more about the UK Government’s Net Zero strategy, different policies across different sectors, and how we’re doing, you can check out the latest Parliamentary report online here.