How to become a sustainable school

You want to make your school more sustainable, but where do you start? These practical steps could help.

From where you stand the journey to a greener future looks quite a task, but now guidance is available from schools that have already made the journey.

Fifty-six schools around England which are currently leading the way in developing sustainability took part in a two year National College project that invited them to share their knowledge about leading for sustainability. The knowledge was captured in a series of College publications and resources.

The schools were asked what advice they would give to leaders wanting to start on the journey of making their schools sustainable – and here’s what they said.

1 Involve students

Many schools formed action teams of pupils who were responsible for projects including monitoring energy levels within the school and ensuring lights and computer monitors were switched off, as well as organising community awareness campaigns and forming links with other schools in the UK and abroad to discuss and develop sustainability ideas.

2 Envisage what you want

It is important to have a vision of the sustainable school you want to be and involve all staff in its creation. Schools without a clear vision and clear aims struggled. Once you have visualised where you want the school to be you can work backwards to identify the steps you need to complete to reach your vision.

3 Network, share with partners, visit others

All schools highlighted the importance of looking at what other schools were doing in developing sustainability. This might include visiting other institutions to see sustainable development in practice and setting up local networks to allow interested parties, including members of the local community to get involved.

4 Put it in your school development plan

For sustainability to be seen as a priority it needs to be in your school development action plan and be a school improvement target.

The project schools recommend to start small when creating a sustainable development action plan by building on what people are already doing and creating clear, achievable objectives consistent with the school’s vision.

5 Be patient, flexible and creative with change – and take risks

Sustainability is a new area and there’s no blueprint. Be patient and believe that it will happen, don’t expect change to happen overnight, be flexible and creative and be prepared to take some risks.

6 Evaluate, prepare, reflect

You can use leadership tools such as S3 (Sustainable Schools Self Evaluation) for development, monitoring and review. You can also conduct an audit with pupils. Organisations like Eco Active can offer this for a fee. Remember to share findings with the school community, at staff meetings, training days and through newsletters.

7 Encourage and distribute leadership and involve the senior management team

Making sustainability part of the school fabric is too much work for one person. Share the load by distributing leadership of the initiative. The National College’s research found that where sustainable development was down to one individual the project fell flat if that person left. Ideas to distribute leadership include:

• Distribute the leadership across as many areas/teams and staff as possible.
• Encourage staff to be committed and make sure that it is not driven by just a few people.
• Identify key leaders and make them accountable.
• Take the initiative to look for funding.
• Share good practice.
• Involve staff and governors through a staff green team.
• Get the backing of your senior management team, head and governor.

8 Influence the next generation of leaders

The importance of developing sustainable schools needs to be emphasised among all school leaders not just headteachers. One school leader involved in the project said: “I would strongly advise that initial teacher training includes some focus on sustainability…the next generation of school leaders needs both training and time to reflect on the state of the world.”

9 Make connections

One of the project school heads advises: “Make the connection between sustainability and the other development issues for the school so that heads and senior management team support the programme…build sustainability into all aspects of development and assessment of school facilities and performance.”

10 Extend learning

One of the benefits of developing sustainable schools is the opportunities it presents in terms of teaching and learning. Students enjoy it because it is real. As one head put it: “Look for every opportunity to extend learning… take risks and learn... share your experiences and rewards however small... learn from each other. Listen to staff, parents and the community. They often have the answers to the questions we spend ages contemplating.”