Sustainable schools

The government in England wants every school to be a sustainable school by 2020. The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DfE) launched their Sustainable Schools Framework in 2006 setting out the challenging long-term aspirations for schools to mainstream learning about sustainable development issues and sustainable practices into everyday school life. There is a dedicated area of Teachernet designed to support schools to work on sustainable development. A range of informative resources are available from this site designed for governors, bursars, pupils, teachers and school leaders to use. The resources include a planning toll and a self assessment tool to asses progress towards the national expectation.

A sustainable school prepares young people for a lifetime of sustainable living by instilling the following values:

• Care for oneself.
• Care for each other regardless of cultures, distances and generations.
• Care for the environment local and global.

Schools are already caring places, but a sustainable school extends this commitment into new areas. Caring about saving energy and water, reducing waste the food it serves, the traffic it attracts and the difficulties faced by people living in its community and in other parts of the world.

A sustainable school takes an integrated approach to its improvement. It explores sustainable development through its curriculum and in its values and ways of working and through its engagement with people and development of local partnerships.

Sustainable schools are great places to learn where pupils are nurtured and their self –esteem developed in order for them to reach high standards of achievement. In many sustainable schools you will see that:

• Little is wasted and any surplus is reused, recycled, composted or donated;
• Food is seasonal and locally sourced;
• Rainwater is collected for the school grounds and flushing toilets;
• There is a zero-tolerance approach to litter graffiti and bullying.

As sustainability is such a broad subject it is separated into eight doorway or entry points where schools can develop sustainable practices. Each doorway draws its inspiration from a range of national priorities around sustainable development. These are as follows:

• Food and drink
• Energy and water
• Travel and Traffic
• Purchasing and waste
• Buildings and grounds
• Local well-being
• Global dimension

These doorways are the same ones used in Eco-Schools which is an international programme which guides schools on their sustainable journey, providing a framework to help embed these principals. Children are the driving force of this programme – they lead the eco-committee and help carry out an audit to assess the environmental performance of their school. Through consultation with the rest of the school and the wider community it is the young people who decide which environmental themes they want to address and how they are going to do it with guidance from a named lead person within the school and support from the Local authority. Measuring and monitoring is an integral part of the Eco-schools programme, providing schools with all the evidence they need to really shout about their success.

Schools work towards one of three awards – Bronze, Silver and the prestigious Green Flag award, which symbolises excellence in the field of environmental activity.

If you would like to access support from Children and Young Peoples Services to get started or to progress further with the Eco-schools programme within your school please contact Beverley Allen on 020-8496-6313 or email beverley.allen@walthamforest.gov.uk

Further resources

• www.teachernet.gov.uk/sustainableschools/
• www.ofsted.gov.uk/Schools-and-sustainability
• www.growingschools.org.uk/
• www.eco-schools.org.uk/
• www.wwf.org.uk/
• www.recycool.org/
• www.walthamforest.gov.uk/sustainable-schools