Today, it was time for GlosGeog to join forces with Nichole (Nicki) Schantz, who is the Climate Ambassador SouthWest Hub Manager and based at the Met. Office at the University of Reading, to offer one of two FREE CPD workshops centred around climate action planning. There is an expectation from the Department for Education (DfE) that all educational settings should have a Sustainability Lead in place by September 2025 and be actively developing a Climate Action Plan (CAP) by December 2025. Sustainability Leads appear to have been appointed by many schools; some are Geography Subject Leaders/Heads of Geography, but majority seem to be headteachers, members of the senior leadership team (SLT) or governing body. Whilst climate action planning is well underway in a few establishments, it is something that many are just embarking upon. Nicki was here to relay delegates’ fears and provide the necessary pointers to set them on their way. With her knowledge and expertise, we were certainly in very capable hands!
After the usual welcome, introductions and housekeeping, I handed over to Nicki. She outlined the aims and gave an overview of today’s session; it was divided into three parts, namely climate change; climate change in education and how to get started.
Focusing on climate change, Nicki considered what is happening and what is causing it; what it means to us and the future is in our hands – our decisions now will affect coming generations. She shared a brilliant animation that she had seen Professor Chris Jones play, which demonstrated how each country in the world had warmed over time, a three-tiered circular diagram to illustrate the impacts of climate change and three possible future scenarios. She also recommended that we visit the Frontiers for Young Minds website as it has a great scientific journal for kids (https://kids.frontiersin.org/collections/17393/climate-change and
https://kids.frontiersin.org/collections/59311/climate-change-volume-2).
Next, Nicki looked at climate change in education. She emphasised the UK’s vision, that a policy update was likely in the very near future, the 5Ps of sustainable development, the required whole institution approach to climate action planning including its four aspects, the role of education settings and how they can fulfil this and what climate action plans can help achieve. Her key takeaways slide was really useful.
Afterwards, Nicki encouraged us to think about where we are on this journey.
Furthermore, Nicki contemplated leadership, governance and stakeholder engagement. Her prompts to get us started were welcomed. She reiterated the importance of creating a team, determining your vision and recognising the ‘why’ all the time. The diagram showing the stakeholders most likely to engage was interesting, alongside suggestions as to how to inspire ‘the middle’ and a case study of The Reuse Shed.
We had some enlightening discussions in breakout rooms, before we reconvened and Nicki shared her takeaway ideas and next steps.
We paused for a short comfort break. Nicki then concentrated on baseline and audit, exploring the four areas of the climate action plan in turn, recommending tools that could be used and websites to access. This part was made interactive too through a short quiz, which revealed some surprising statistics, and discussions in breakout rooms that even led to us to debate the pros and cons of AI (its huge potential to enhance teaching and learning and support with routine tasks versus its power-consuming attributes). I will, undoubtedly, be investigating the Count your Carbon tool (https://www.countyourcarbon.org/), Greener Schools Index (https://greenerschoolsindex.co.uk/), National Education Nature Park’s biodiversity mapping resources (https://www.educationnaturepark.org.uk/resource/mapping-your-site), steps to becoming a climate resilient school (could be a purposeful local fieldwork enquiry) and assessing flooding maps (showcasing the use of GIS) further.
In addition, Nicki talked about the importance of setting SMART (specific; measureable; achieveable; relevant and time-bound) targets and provided examples of these.
She also explained more about the Climate Ambassadors programme and what is on offer to schools; plenty, it seems!
Towards the end of the session, Nicki displayed the following slide to support us with our first steps.
Some of delegates’ ‘concluding comments‘ can be viewed below:
Thank you. Really informative and helpful.
Really helpful – thank you.
Thank you. That was really informative and inspiring to move forward.
Thank you for this morning, it has been really helpful.
Thanks, the recording will be appreciated along with the slides.
Thank you for today, looking forward to the next session.
Look forward to getting slides and the next session.
A valuable way to spend a wintry morning, with all gaining greater insight into their role and responsibilities, as well as being introduced to effective climate action planning. Looking forward to catching up again in mid-January for Part 2 and sharing what we have achieved in the interim.
Good luck!