Oct 8, 2024
Having a Sustainability Leader and a Climate Action Plan is an obligation for all schools from next year and we can help. Keep reading to find out about our plans and how you can get started.
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.
Cumbria Action for Sustainability (CAfS) and CDEC are working together to support Cumbrian schools to develop their initial 3 year Climate Action Plan. Working with school leaders, teachers, office and ancillary staff as well as pupils and the wider community, we are committed to enabling your setting to identify and train your sustainability leads, develop Climate Action Plans and offer ongoing support, guidance and connection.
How we can support you:
Setting off:
webinar on a 4 step approach to developing your climate action plan (offered by ZCC for £25). Follow up webinar and/or conversation with CDEC (funded by the ZCC programme) to identify next steps, priorities and actions.
Developing your approach, covering:
Step 1 > Creating your sustainability group - who needs to be onboard as your sustainability leadership group and how you are going to deliver?
Step 2 > Knowing where you are starting from – the DfE are suggesting 4 areas of focus:
- Decarbonisation
- Adaptation and resilience
- Biodiversity
- Climate Education and green careers
To make this Cumbria specific, we have combined these with the Zero Carbon Cumbria Emission Reduction Action Plans of Buildings, Transport, Consumption/Waste and Land Use. We can suggest tools which can help you identify where you are now so you can evaluate progress, know what actions to take and prioritise.
Step 3 > Creating your climate action plan
Using the ZCC Climate Action Template or another of your choosing support the sustainability leadership group with what actions you can take, signposting to available resources and training.
Step 4 > Prioritisation/timescales/evaluation
Identify how you might prioritise and measure the climate actions
CDEC will lead on this- £50 pp for a half day session or £400 for 6 or more staff.This stage will also include matching schools with resources and experts, including through CAfS and sustainability networks, the national climate ambassadors programme and general ongoing support from CDEC. This will include opportunities to connect with other Sustainability Leads and schools to learn from each other, share resources and ideas.
Sustain/Embed:
In-person school climate change and sustainability curriculum training* (outline of courses offered below). This strand is fed throughout, offering you in-person training opportunities to enable implementation, development of all key aspects of the strategy/ action plan, curriculum enhancement, pedagogical approaches.
*Training you choose could include:
- Climate change and Sustainability curriculum training: full day and will include an opportunity to develop/add to your Climate Action Plan (£100 pp; delivered by CDEC) as outlined above. The Climate Curriculum course is focused on supporting schools to develop their curriculum (primary and secondary) to include the Climate knowledge, skills and attitudes required by young people.
- Climate Literacy (CAfS delivery full day) Our interactive Climate and Carbon Literacy training course provides a clear understanding of climate science, an awareness of carbon costs and the impacts of everyday activities. It will leave you with the ability and motivation to reduce emissions on an individual, community and organisational basis and is a great way to meet like minded people. Our inspiring, informative and interactive training course is accredited by the Carbon Literacy Project.
- Climate Fresk (CAfS delivery 3 hour; cost to be confirmed) Climate Fresk is an extremely interactive group activity where a facilitator uses a pack of cards to support a group of people to map the causes and effects of the climate crisis, and together, through discussion, unpick the complexities, interrelated issues and feedback loops involved. It is a really engaging, collaborative method for understanding the fundamentals of climate science. It uses 42 ‘cards’ drawn directly from the latest IPCC reports and gives a deep dive into the whole climate system.
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