This guide is to help schools play their part in helping to tackle climate change and protect and enhance nature.
With different sections for teachers, estates and buildings teams and senior management, this toolkit includes ideas for actions and projects schools can undertake as they inspire pupils to learn about and act on climate change and biodiversity.
Schools that want to become more sustainable could consider signing up to Let’s Go Zero. The national initiative provides tips, resources and best practice examples to support climate action as it brings together schools to share progress and call for support to achieve their carbon neutral ambitions.
These resources and ideas could help you inspire your pupils to take planet-positive steps at school and at home to save energy, reduce food waste, save water, care for plants and wildlife and make our air cleaner.
If you are a key stage two teacher, you can invite our Green Team to come into your school to lead free interactive and engaging classroom activities and assemblies. All about our planet and nature, these have been created with the national curriculum in mind. Take a look at our Green Team’s schools activities webpage to see what’s on offer.
And if you’re interested in getting your pupils out of the classroom and into nature, you can contact our Rangers to find out more about the series of outdoor activities for school-age children that they’re working on and plan to launch next year.
Switch on to ‘switching off’ encourage pupils to turn off lights and computers when they’re not in use to avoid waste, save money and help stop our planet heating up further.
Take the Energy Saving Schools Challenge this five-part lesson series from the Energy Savings Trust has students explore how energy is created and how that can affect climate change. They then produce action plans for saving energy at home and at school.
Creative ways to use leftover food with Beano’s Yummy Leftovers lessons, pupils will imagine ways to use leftover food as they learn about how food is wasted and its impact.
Taste It, Don’t Waste It, targeted at key stage two and designed to fit into a half term, these lesson plans on reducing food waste come from the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP).
Aquanauts, are you ready? pupils can join the Aquanauts for fun-filled adventures where they’ll learn how to save water and help wildlife. The activities are all online on South East Water’s Aquanaut webpages.
If you are west of the borough you can access free activities from Southern Water’s education pages.
Go on a school insect safari take pupils outside to find wildlife in school grounds and learn about the plants that help them with the support of the free resources on the National Geographic Kids website .
Build bug hotels, Chester Zoo’s webpage about bug hotels includes a step-by-step printable how-to guide and a video.
In addition to the above, The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has curriculum-linked resources and a sustainability guide for schools on its website. Hampshire County Council, as the local education authority, also has sustainability resources for schools on its Moodle platform.
Here are just a few ideas for how you could improve your school’s buildings and grounds to reduce their impact on the planet and make it easier for pupils and parents to play their part to tackle climate change and protect nature.
By swapping old halogen lights for LED lights or by having insulation installed in the roof and walls. The Government periodically opens applications to its Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme, which can fund energy-saving improvements for public sector organisations including schools.
You can get furniture and technology, like desks, lockers and computers, for free from charity Business2Schools. It sources unwanted furniture from businesses and provides it to schools in the state sector at no cost.
If you’ve got buildings with large roofs, contact our Climate Change team for a free solar panel report setting out how many panels they may be suitable for and how much energy they could generate. A grant from the Government’s Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme, when it is open for applications, could help to pay for the new solar panels.
Hampshire County Council’s schools can access the BSMI Medic energy management system to monitor smart meter gas and electricity data to improve energy efficiency. Please get in touch with energy@hants.gov.uk to find out more.
Create new habitats for wildlife and shade for students and staff by planting free trees from the Woodland Trust. You could even get older students involved in helping to plant the saplings.
Save money in the long term by installing water butts.
Dig a small channel beneath or put a small 13cm hole in at the bottom of your school’s fences to help hedgehogs roam in search of food and shelter.
Put bike racks in so staff and students can choose to cycle to school instead.
You could also sign your school up to the energy management platform run by charity Energy Sparks. There is a fee, though it also gives your school access to other resources including lesson resources for teaching staff.
As influential senior managers, you could consider these ideas that would help your school, including its staff as well as students and their relatives, to tackle the climate and ecological emergency.
Students aged 11 to 18 can make their view heard by being elected to the Hampshire Youth Parliament. The parliament’s ongoing 'Protect Hampshire’s Environment' campaign involves holding eco-conferences, working with Regional Youth Climate Assembly South East and producing a podcast on the environment. There is also climate conference each year in July.
Encourage people dropping off and picking up pupils to switch off their engines at the school gates to cut carbon and make our air cleaner by getting your school involved with our clean air campaign.
This could include taking part in charity Living Streets’ Walk to School Week in May and encouraging parents and guardians to set up a ‘walking bus’.
Consider banning single-use plastics, such as cups and water bottles, and using alternatives instead. There are free resources for your teachers for both primary and secondary schools on the Plastic Clever Schools website.
Whether you want to tell us about things that are missing from this toolkit, give us more ideas for tackling climate change or share what your school is already doing to reduce its environmental impact with us, you can get in touch with our Climate Change team.
Page reviewer: Claire Kew
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