Become Net Zero Heroes
The DfE’s Sustainability and Climate Change Strategy expects schools and nurseries to have embedded a sustainability leadership team and a Climate Action Plan by 2025. Alongside using Count Your Carbon to work on decarbonisation, we’ve produced a handy resource which will guide you through taking steps to address the DfE’s requirements. Read on to find out more about the government’s expectations for schools by 2025, and to download our Net Zero Heroes guide.
A Climate Action Plan should be designed to outline an approach to making positive impact across four key areas:
- Decarbonisation – an approach to achieving net zero across your school’s operations.
- Adaptation and resilience – an approach that will prepare your school for future impacts of climate change (i.e. floods).
- Biodiversity – an approach that will make your site greener, capturing carbon and supporting wildlife.
- Climate education, training and jobs – an approach to develop pupil understanding of climate change and sustainability whilst developing their ‘Green Skills’ – “the knowledge, abilities, values and attitudes needed to live in, develop and support a society which reduces the impact of human activity on the environment”.
Download the Net Zero Heroes guide
The DfE have not yet released further guidance for creating Climate Action Plans. This, combined with restraints on time and resource, and a lack of confidence in their ‘climate literacy’, means that many schools don’t feel prepared to meet this expectation. Eco-School’s Net Zero Heroes guide aims to alleviate fears and reservations experienced by many schools when it comes to net zero and climate action plans, by outlining 10 simple and realistic steps that schools can take. From forming your ‘squad’ to enlisting pupil power, we outline what you can do and how you can do it, linking to some great resources and guides.
