Elena Clark – Another Way – An introduction to Another Way and about our schools work with Power of 10 (15 mins) – Slides
Lauren Mysiw & Kayla Thompson – Sheffield Family Hubs/Breastfeeding in Sheffield – Promotion of the Infant Feeding team educational offer and signing up to the Breastfeeding in Sheffield ‘Breastfeeding Friendly Award’ for public spaces and employers (15 mins) – Slides
Sian Buckley – Global Action Plan – information and promotion about the Good Life Schools programme currently being delivered and recruiting for 2025/26 in Sheffield (15 mins) – Slides
John Bray- Discovery Outdoors– Learning outdoors and connecting with nature and green spaces in Sheffield (15 mins) – Slides
Sasha Beswick- Barnsley College – 2030 SDG game and other activities/opportunity (5 mins) (no slides)
Michala Sullivan – National Energy Agency – fully funded workshops for KS3 – KS5 (5 mins) –Slides
If you would like a link to the TeachMeet, please complete this short eForm. A calendar invite will be sent nearer the time, so please block out in your calendar.
By Lee Jowett Climate Change and Sustainability Research Fellow Sheffield Institute of Education
In July, the new Labour government announced a review of the national curriculum. Two of its stated aims are to ‘ensure children and young people leave compulsory education ready for life and ready for work’, and to ‘reflect the issues … of our society.’
Today is the last day for submitting evidence which I am currently in the process of doing myself, my usual tact of leaving things to the last minute!
If the review is to succeed in these aims, it cannot ignore climate change — arguably the defining issue of our age, and certainly key to many jobs of the future as the UK moves towards net zero.
Over the last year, I have been interviewing senior leaders and teachers in primary schools, secondary schools, further education colleges and local authorities to find out how climate change is currently taught. I have discovered a lot of great work, instigated by passionate staff members.
But in all of my conversations, one thing was clear — for climate change to be given the time and attention it requires, it must be embedded in the curriculum.
The current situation — an inconsistent picture
The Department for Education brought out a climate change strategy in 2021, but crucially it wasn’t mandatory. This has meant that — with so many competing priorities and all the demands of the mandatory elements of the curriculum — many schools are only dimly aware of it.
Of course, schools and their staff recognise climate change as one of the most important challenges facing our species, and therefore they want to teach it to our children. But this is happening almost despite government policy, rather than because of it.
One headteacher told me, ‘The whole curriculum needs a massive overhaul, and schools shouldn’t be so outcome-driven. Climate change is as important as reading and maths. There’s no point in being able to read, write or do the times tables if we’re all living off rubbish heaps.’
In all of my conversations with educators, nearly every one of them has singled out a lack of time and space in the curriculum as a key barrier to teaching climate change.
It means current efforts at climate education are piecemeal and inconsistent, largely driven by the heroic efforts of individual members of staff rather than an overarching strategy. There are great initiatives happening, but whether your child will get to experience them currently depends entirely on where they go to school.
Interestingly, in the further education colleges I spoke to, sustainability was much more embedded in the curriculum. This is because these institutions tend to collaborate with employers, who need college leavers with these skills.
But the college staff I spoke to said that students were coming to them with a lack of awareness, because it’s not taught to the same level in primary and secondary schools.
Learning from success stories
The good news is that in all of the schools I spoke to, there was excellent work happening around sustainability and climate education.
From the Tiny Forests and Edible Playgrounds projects which help schools make the most of their outdoor space, to the Eco–Schools scheme for schools, children and young people across the country are taking part in practical, solution-focused climate programmes.
Alongside these national schemes, I found that local authorities can make a huge difference. Leicester City Council are the shining example. Their Sustainable Schools team provides free support to all Leicester schools, focusing on carbon reduction and increasing biodiversity on school grounds.
They also run a huge number of projects that schools can take part in, including Less Litter for Leicester, the Mealbarrow food-growing competition, and Sustainable Drainage Systems for Schools. As a result of all this work, Leicester has the highest number of Eco-Schools Green Flag Awards of any unitary authority in England.
So what can we learn from the best examples of schools teaching climate change and sustainability well? From my conversations, two things stand out as crucial to these success stories.
The first must-have is a passionate sustainability lead with the remit to oversee climate education across the whole school. Sometimes this is a teacher, sometimes a group of teachers, and occasionally it’s part of a wider leadership role. One eco-lead told me, ‘You need to have someone who’s willing to really champion it, to make it easier for the rest of the staff to engage in the projects.’
The second is senior leadership who recognise the importance of climate education and give it the time and institutional backing needed. Without this, climate change risks being lost among other priorities.
One college leader told me, ‘It is successful at our college because everybody from the board down has bought into it. When I’m speaking to colleagues from other settings, sometimes they haven’t got that whole organisational buy-in. They’re always battling against it because although it’s a good idea, it’s seen as an add-on.’
What needs to be done
The current climate change strategy needs to be strengthened. It talks a lot about buildings and procurement, but not so much about teaching and learning. The curriculum and assessment review is an opportunity to change this, and provide the political will to truly embed climate education in our schools.
Again and again in my interviews, teachers said they didn’t have time to focus on climate. This could be resolved by slimming down the overall curriculum. Teachers also need time to be trained in climate education and sustainability, so they have the confidence to deliver it.
Finally, climate education must be made a mandatory part of the curriculum. Having a sustainability lead in each school would mean it is embedded in all decision-making, in a similar way to safeguarding. This is already happening in the best examples I spoke to, but it needs to be rolled out nationally. Having attended one of the live events in Doncaster yesterday, I was encouraged to hear colleagues asking for climate change and sustainability to be part of the national curriculum. Becky Francis herself reflected on climate change and sustainability being a theme across many of the events.
Climate change should become a golden thread that runs throughout the curriculum. It’s what the teachers I have spoken to want. And it’s what our children and young people deserve.
Lee Jowett is a Climate Change and Sustainability Research Fellow at Sheffield Hallam University. Previously he worked for a local authority and has been a secondary school science teacher. He can be contacted on l.jowett@shu.ac.uk
Bridget Bircumshaw is a teaching and quality lead at Chesterfield College. We spoke to her about how they are embedding green skills into the curriculum at every level.
Can you give some background on your college?
We have about 6,000 students, mainly 16 to 18 year olds, plus 1,800 apprentices, 300 higher education students, 300 for adult provision and 560 members of staff.
What’s your role and what responsibilities do you have for climate change and sustainability?
I am a teaching and learning quality lead across the whole college, looking at quality improvement and assurance. I am also a teacher trainer. It’s my role to really drive green skills. It was something we wanted to bring in for development but it didn’t initially fit under my job description. It does now.
When Covid hit we had to get online really quickly, and we realised that as a sustainable educational system, digital enterprise was something that we needed to look at. So that was almost the seed that started where we were going to go.
Why is sustainability important to you and your college?
We don’t call it sustainability, we call it green skills. Further education is all about skills. Sustainability tends to be thought of as about recycling and litter, and it can prevent people thinking about the wider picture. So we’ve rebranded it as green skills, and that’s what goes into our curriculum. It’s what we talk to employers about when we work with them on the curriculum and how our students develop their wider skills.
Have you had any training around sustainability or climate education?
What activities have you undertaken at your college?
The first thing we did was set up a panel including people from across the college, from the CEO down. We meet regularly to work out how we’re going to follow the DfE road map.
Then we turned one of our regular inset days into a sustainability day where staff and students all came in and learned from each other. We based it on the UNESCO seventeen global goals and we linked each of the goals to an area. By the end of the day everyone had an awareness of what climate justice is about. The following year we focused on wellbeing and life skills through the green skills lens. Our third year will concentrate on personal development and volunteering to support self and communities.
In our curriculum, we have added green skills as one of the key pieces of the jigsaw. Childcare students learn about forest schools, and as part of that they made a hedgehog-friendly campus. When they did their placements, they took that learning to their nurseries or education centres. Our plumbing students did grey water harvesting, building a tank which collected rainwater that can be used to flush toilets.
Green skills are no longer something that stands outside the curriculum, it’s embedded throughout our curriculum. And it trickles down throughout the college. In hairdressing and beauty, we look at the products that we use. In catering, they only buy from a 20-mile radius now, cutting down on transport costs.
What barriers have you faced?
For staff, it’s time. ‘How am I going to do this? I haven’t got the skills to do that. I’m a brickie. I’m a hairdresser.’ We had to simplify it, strip it right back. It’s awareness you need, you don’t need a master’s degree in it.
Our tutors are vocational specialists. Instead of observing and grading them, we’re giving them back their professionalism — saying, ‘You are the professional in this area, so show us what you want to do in a practical way. How will this support our learners?’
Working with employers and having their input into developing our curricula is highly important. Green skills are needed in so many different sectors. Students want to hear it from the horse’s mouth before you teach it to them.
Do you think what you’ve done could be replicated in other FE institutions?
It is successful at our college because everybody from the board down has bought into it. It is a strategic strand. When attending events with other FE institutions, I notice that there are often hubs of people doing things but they haven’t got that whole organisational buy-in. So they’re always battling against it because although it’s a good idea, it’s seen as an add-on.
In the colleges where it is working, they all have very high-up buy-in. It’s brought up all the time at board meetings. It’s more and more important. From next year, we’ll need to show data showing that we are decarbonising the curriculum and the impact this has on teaching and learning assessment for our learners’ skills development and progression.
At our college, we want green skills to be the social purpose for our learners. We want them to have that added value to what they do in life, so they’re able to support themselves and give something back to their communities. We want our students to embrace change through green skills and personal development, not as a burden but as an opportunity to grow and innovate, honing their skills to match jobs out there that are just waiting to be invented.
Jess Rick is the environmental sustainability manager at The Sheffield College, a further education college with approximately 13,000 students who study vocational, academic and professional courses every year, including a sizeable adult education cohort. We spoke to her about how she is trying to embed sustainability throughout the college, from the buildings to the curriculum.
Can you give some background on your college?
The Sheffield College is a large general further education college. We have about 13,000 students on a variety of two-year, one-year and shorter courses. We have lots of access courses, there’s a higher education department and a sixth form, and we run a lot of apprenticeships too. We have several sites around Sheffield.
What’s your role and what responsibilities do you have for climate change and sustainability?
I’m the Environmental Sustainability Manager for the college. It’s a new post which sits in the estates department, but it’s a broad, cross-college role which includes the curriculum as well as the estate.
My role specifically supports the implementation and delivery of our Environmental Sustainability strategy that sets out the College’s objective of achieving Net Zero Carbon by 2040. I’m also responsible for helping our Academies to develop and build our “green” curriculum offer so that the skills needs of the future can be met.
Why is sustainability important to you and your college?
For me personally, it underpins everything. If we don’t have those basic ecosystems and the things that support life on the planet working properly, then nothing’s going to happen. It always comes back to the fact that we’ve got to survive.
In terms of the college, there’s a lot more emphasis on sustainability from the Department for Education. And of course there are many individual staff members who want to take action. And from the students’ point of view, they’re going to be living in our future world, so it’s really important that they have a functioning environment to live in.
Have you had any training around sustainability or climate education?
My background is environmental consultancy, from the estates side of things. I’m new to the education sector. Since I started here, I’ve done Carbon Literacy training, but for me it’s more about understanding the sector.
What activities have you undertaken at your college?
The first thing I needed to do when I started was to develop our Environmental Sustainability Action Plan, so I’ve used the FE (further education) roadmap framework for this. It encompasses teaching and learning, estates and operations, partnerships and engagement, reporting, and leadership and governance.
About 6 months after I started, we had a consultant come in for a week and spend time with all the curriculum teams. That highlighted lots of things that teachers are already getting on with in various courses. Quite a lot of the courses we run are inherently relevant, like land management and animal care. Many courses such as construction, catering and tourism include environmental content. Even the games development course had a project designing a tool for a company that removes plastics from the ocean.
A lot of the feedback we got from teachers was that if it’s not in the curriculum, it’s quite difficult to add extra content due to time constraints. But people are keen to use projects to include content on sustainability.
Our Building Technologies Academy have blazed a trail for us in terms of introducing new courses, because there is a lot of retrofitting going on around the city and a greater demand for things like installing heat pumps.
The other main feedback we got from the consultancy was that teachers need more training and more confidence to deliver content that they don’t know. So, we’re starting off with some Carbon Literacy training, but also looking at what CPD and industry-specific learning teachers need to be doing.
In terms of estates, we’ve made heat decarbonisation plans for the buildings. It’s not just the major investment pieces, but also the day-to-day operations, such as ensuring our major contracts include sustainability requirements.
We had an all-staff session on sustainability and people were talking about putting things in the right bins, but we need to think bigger! Huge change needs to happen. We need to think about what being sustainable means and where it sits in our priorities.
What barriers have you faced?
For teaching, it’s time, resources, training and confidence. For estates, it’s financial. It would take at least £10 million of investment over the next 15 years for us to fully decarbonise.
Another thing that’s been raised is that a lot of our students come to us with no knowledge of climate change or sustainability issues. Hopefully that’s going to change as it’s taught more in primary and secondary. Engagement with the students can be a barrier here because it’s difficult to get them interested in doing things outside of their course, as they’re working or busy.
Where do you find out about available funding and projects?
We’re members of the EAUC and get a lot of updates through that. I also find out about things through personal networking on LinkedIn and around Sheffield, talking to colleagues in other institutions.
Do you think what you’ve done could be replicated in other FE institutions?
I think so. A lot of the other colleges that I’ve spoken to in FE network meetings have smaller campuses and fewer students, so it’s a bit easier to implement things and communicate to all staff. If you’re getting buy-in at a senior level from different department heads then you’ll start to get traction.
