Can local schools save the planet?

What is the current policy?

In April 2022, the UK Department for Education published its first policy paper connecting school education to the need to both adjust to and mitigate the effects of climate change by improving sustainable practices.

On top of infrastructural objectives connected to becoming carbon neutral, the Department for Education has also committed to increasing opportunities for all children and young people to ‘spend time in nature and learn more about it', as well as for them to 'become actively involved in the improvement of their local environment.’

This all sounds great...but what does it mean?

Connecting the dots

Firstly, yes, it is great. Many countries do not yet have any policies that recognise the important role local schools play in sustainable development. However, a policy sets the direction, but does not necessarily tell us how to get there. There are still lots of questions that need answers.

To develop ways for young people to ‘spend time in nature and learn more about it’, for example, as the policy recommends, we must first understand what we mean by ‘nature. This is a problem that has been vexing scholars for many years. The question of ‘what is nature’ is affected by where we live and why we are asking this question.

O’Neill points out that the UK remains a highly urbanised country, with 84.4% of the population living in cities in 2022 (a figure which has increased by 3% over the past decade). Do cities count as nature? If not, is immersing students in ‘nature’ the right way to make them care about the impacts of climate change? We could perhaps replace ‘nature’ with ‘environments’: this may help us see our cities and communities more affectionately as places we care about and want to see remain above water for generations to come.

We also need to unpack the question of how children are to become actively involved in improving their environment. What does it mean to be actively involved? How should this be supported? Who is responsible for making this happen?

Of course, understanding children as agents of change is far from being a new approach – Fridays for Future are a vivid memory for many - but how do we take it from activism to the mainstream? How do we shift from inviting children to participate in school, towards supporting them to develop the competencies that would turn them into meaningful and powerful change makers?

A lot of these questions are left to be answered at an individual or local level, and not all schools are able to do so. To coordinate these efforts is even more difficult when local councils all over the country are struggling financially and our own local council has declared itself bankrupt, along with 8 others in England in the last year.

How can we help?

What is the role of researchers like me in all of this? To move forward, it is important that we can reflect on where we are, evaluate how effective we are being and how we can improve. That’s where universities come in. Universities often have the resources and connections to reach out and do the work in local communities that no one has the time or money to do. The University of Nottingham is excellent at bringing together stakeholders from different backgrounds and sectors to collaborate on finding ways forward.

This is exactly what I intend to do with my project, supported by the Institute for Policy and Engagement. I am setting out to give Primary School Leaders and teachers the chance to engage with this policy and tailor it to suit their schools and communities. By exploring what fantastic work schools are already doing locally, we will be able to identify the current barriers and future opportunities, collaborating with policy makers, practitioners, and researchers to identify the ways forward in a creative and inclusive way.

If you are interested in what I am doing, want to know more or even want to be part of it, please get in touch.