A new GCSE will always capture the headlines - and so it proved when the government unveiled its sustainability strategy last week, which included a new natural history GCSE.

With its promise from exam board OCR of giving children a “rigorous understanding of the natural world” and support from the likes of Bear Grylls and Baroness Floella Benjamin, it’s no wonder it garnered attention - and will probably be of keen interest for pupils to study.

But within the strategy, there was a lot more for schools to ponder, perhaps most notably the government’s desire for all education settings - including those in the early years - to have a dedicated “sustainability lead” by 2025.

This role will require the chosen individual to “own” a “climate action plan” that will outline a setting’s approach to sustainability in terms of  “curricular and extracurricular activity”, procurement, adaptation to climate change and decarbonisation plans.

More work ahead

No small task, then - and yet another thing for schools to have to add to their workload, as Caroline Derbyshire, chair of the Headteachers’ Roundtable group and trust leader for Saffron Academy Trust dryly noted.

“We add more responsibilities and rarely take any away in the world of education,” she says.

James Bowen, director of policy at the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT), elaborated on the concern in an emailed comment to Tes.

“Given the potential scope of the role, this could have major workload implications on an already stretched workforce, and there seems to be no additional funding attached to actually pay for the new role either,” he said.

“The reality is that there are only so many members of staff available, particularly in primary and smaller schools - it is not entirely clear precisely who the government expects to do this role.”

Neil Leitch, chief executive of the Early Years Alliance, said much the same for the early years sector: “We value the DfE’s (Department for Education’s) increased focused on sustainability in the early years. However, expectations for providers must be realistic and serve to inspire early years educators, not overwhelm them.” 

A welcome initiative

This is not to say that the overall idea of a dedicated role in schools and nurseries focused more on sustainability and climate change is not welcome - quite the opposite in fact, with Bowen saying the union regularly hears from schools that want to do more in this area.

“We know that school leaders are deeply committed not just to teaching pupils about sustainability, environmental issues and climate change but also to ensuring that sustainability is a core part of their school culture,” he outlined.

“They tell us that now, more than ever, their pupils are desperate to learn more and to do more about this most crucial of topics.”

Kulvarn Atwal, the executive headteacher of two large primary schools in the London Borough of Redbridge, is one such leader to represent that view and said that, overall, he agrees with “the idea of someone taking responsibility for sustainability within the school setting”.

But, he said for this to have a real impact, meaningful support - including funding - is needed: “The person would need to be supported by appropriate professional development as well as sufficient funding/resourcing for all schools. It should also be practitioner led, so teachers should be involved in leading at a strategic level, including the development of resources.”

To this concern, the DfE can point to some specific help it has outlined in the strategy.

For example, to help on the procurement side of things it will “ensure sustainability is part of the assessment and validation criteria for including suppliers on procurement frameworks”, so schools can be confident that suppliers are adhering to sustainability standards.

Carbon literacy training

Perhaps more notably, though, the DfE also said that all sustainability leads will receive “carbon literacy training” to help them “build their knowledge of climate change” and learn how to “develop a climate action plan” to help drive a setting’s sustainability initiatives forward.

For the uninitiated, carbon literacy training is defined by the Carbon Literacy Project (CLP) as “an awareness of the carbon dioxide costs and impacts of everyday activities, and the ability and motivation to reduce emissions, on an individual, community and organisational basis”.

What might this mean in practical terms for any future sustainability lead?

Phil Korbel, a director with the CLP, explains that the purpose of carbon literacy training is two-fold: first to drive buy-in, so those on the course see the relevance to their setting of what they are learning.

“By making it feel relevant, it moves this issue from being another piece of compliance to something meaningful,” he says of the first point - something he believes educators will find stimulating.

“Our experience is that there is feeling at large that people want to act on climate but they don’t know what to do, [so] when you’re presented with CPD that says, ‘we’re going to get you trained up on this and enable you to do a whole bunch of good stuff’, that’s really invigorating.”

The second element is to offer practical ideas for those on the course to take back to their setting and share on Inset days or at other staff meetings.

“It might be about educating them to be able to make the case to a business manager to put up solar panels - and how that will save carbon, and the payback time to do this - or why a school should swap out fluorescent tubes for LEDs,” he explains.

It should be made clear that specific training for education settings has not been created yet and that the CLP is not a training firm but instead provides material to facilitators to offer training.

Who will deliver this training or whether resources from CLP will be used has also not been specified - and the DfE had not responded to a request for information on these points at the time of publication.

However, the DfE did confirm to Tes that there will be funding for at least one person in every school - whether in MATs or local authorities - to attend this training.

It will only be available to maintained nurseries, though - meaning some 80,000 privately run nurseries will miss out, something Leitch at Alliance said was very dispiriting.

“Many early years providers in non-maintained settings have been pioneers of climate education, and are eager and willing to build upon this in the future. However, without receiving carbon literacy training, this will be near impossible for many to achieve,” he said.

Learning from others

For sustainability leads who can access the carbon literacy training, however, this sounds as if it will prove useful to help build up the knowledge and skills necessary to implement plans to help develop sustainable strategies.

What’s more, this is not something schools will have to become skilled in overnight, with the government’s deadline of 2025 meaning that there are almost three years to get this in place and start to deliver real change.

Of course, for many schools, none of this will be anything new, with efforts to reduce carbon use, become more energy-efficient and engage pupils in climate-related activities already well under way - and such activities may may serve as a useful guide for any schools about to start this journey.

One such school is St Christopher’s CE High School and Sixth Form, near Accrington in Lancashire, where Wendy Litherland, director of sustainability and enrichment, says she has been working on driving sustainability issues for 15 years. She admits it took a long time to gain buy-in.

“I’m on the senior leadership team now but, to be quite honest, it was a bit of a joke at first. It was ‘send the children to me, I’ll get them digging’. Now, though, we have got to the point where every form has a representative and they [the pupils] all want to do it.”

This work covers everything from seeking funding to modernise old buildings and improve their energy efficiency to erecting a polytunnel for growing vegetables, to reducing single plastic use, right through to children visiting the European Parliament to raise issues of climate change. They even host their own climate conference.

This may sound like a lot to emulate for a new sustainability lead but Litherland says there are some key steps for those new to this area to follow to try to achieve similar outcomes.

One element she says is vital is persuading senior staff to get behind any green strategy - from how it can augment children’s education and the money it can save schools to simply because acting sustainably is “the right thing to do”.

Pupil power

Making the moral case for sustainability may sound tough but Litherland says there is a not-so-secret weapon sustainability leads should be able to turn to here - pupil power.

“It’s all been about pupil power…responding to what pupils want and need, and facilitating what the children have asked for…that’s been the driver for so much of this.”

This is a trend that education has seen rising over the past decade or so - mostly notable with the climate strikes of a few years ago - and so Litherland says that any new sustainability lead needs to ensure they harness this pupil power to help drive forward the work they are tasked with.

As well as this, she also recommends that a sustainability lead works with a dedicated governor who can take responsibility for this from the top down and ensure it is routinely on the agenda.

Emma Knights, chief executive of the National Governance Association, unsurprisingly agrees, but says that this, too, is often achieved through pupil power.

“We have heard time and time again about pupil voice and that this is what gets a lot of governing boards involved,” she said.

”[We heard at our AGM] that governors were saying [pupils] want to talk to us about mental health and the planet - that’s what is interesting them and I think the pupils are probably ahead of the adults on this in a lot of ways.”

Returning to Litherland, her last piece of advice for any sustainability lead is to make sure they “negotiate capacity for themselves” to be able to properly focus on this area and look for support of school staff, too - because any long-term goals will only be achieved with collaboration.

“You’ve got to look at the bills, look at the garden, the lights, the curriculum…you need a working party to help with this.

“I can’t do this without our caretakers, IT support, administration staff…it has to be a holistic approach and it has to be backed by SLT.”

Getting this backing is something that may have proved tough in the past - as Litherland’s early experiences underline - and no doubt has scuppered many others’ efforts to drive a sustainability focus forward in education settings.

However, she says that with the government strategy urging settings to create sustainability leads, it should help remove this barrier and allow more good work to develop.

“If you’ve got that top-down pressure from government and children’s pressure from the bottom-up, then hopefully you can meet in the middle - that is the perfect scenario.”

Getting everyone on board 

Again, though, it hard to escape the reality that taking on the role of sustainability lead is, quietly, a huge undertaking - with reference to buildings, curriculum links, IT, caretakers, procurement, adaptation to climate change and much more. Does anyone in a school have time for this?

“We would also seriously question whether one person could, or should, be responsible for the wide range of areas outlined by the DfE,” says Bowen.

“For example, it is unrealistic to expect the same member of staff to lead on both curriculum development and sustainable procurement, two areas which need very different training and expertise.”

Korbel at CLP, though, said he sees what the government is proposing as making sustainability leads the “conveners” in school, who work to get colleagues from teaching, from estates and from governance, on board and doing their bit to help tackle climate change, rather than one person actively leading on everything.

This aligns with the government’s note in the sustainability strategy, where it says it wants sustainability leads to work to “develop a facilitative approach to sustainability leadership”.

Even so, knocking on doors, sending emails, cajoling estates teams to change lightbulbs or install solar panels - that’s a lot for one person to add to their normal workload, especially when, as Bowen notes, it can cover everything from procurement to curriculum.

No escaping the workload question

To this end, Knights, at the NGA, echoes Litherland’s point that anyone who takes this role on will have to be given plenty of capacity so they can properly focus on what is being asked.

“Wishing a sustainability lead won’t make it happen…the job can be done by an existing member of staff, but they would need to be relieved of other tasks to create the capacity, so there is a knock on effect.”

She suggests that one way of reducing the workload impact may be to split what the role is asking for into two - an education lead and a business lead - so that the different skills needed for delivering on the aims of the sustainability lead’s goals can be met.

That’s a neat division of labour but it still means we’re adding to people’s workloads. At the school level, this is hardly ideal when there is so much else to do, from catch-up and mental health focus, to gearing up to deliver on the new White Paper goals around maths, English, literacy and numeracy.

This is exactly the concern Mark Chatley, trust leader at Coppice Primary Partnership, has, noting that even though he recognises it is an area that needs focus, where the capacity will come from remains unclear.

“With the White Paper and the Green Paper, as well as being very near to SATs time, it feels like one more thing at the moment,” he says.

“I can see the value in it, especially with rising energy costs and the net-zero goal but, at the moment, I don’t know where we would be able to redirect resources from.”

The role of MATs

It’s a view shared by Paddy Hall, vice chair of trustees at the Education Alliance Multi Academy Trust (MAT) and chair of Hunsley Primary Free School’s local governing body - and a former Ofsted inspector - who said he thinks what is being proposed would make a lot more sense if it was being run through MATs.

“It’s typically only medium-sized and bigger trusts that have a director of estates, who looks after the buildings or catering staff, who are leading on the food and supply chains, the people who are buying all the books and equipment in the school and furnishing rooms.”

“It’s only in a trust that you’ve got several people with those different levels of expertise, who can get together under a good leader and make some sense of it.”

To this point, Hall said at the Education Alliance MAT that they have recently created a role for a member of staff to give 40 per cent of their time towards looking at how all schools in the trust can become sustainable and carbon neutral - and engage with key stakeholders like the head of estates and finance.

This makes a lot of sense, and large MATs certainly should have the scale to make a big impact if they can direct their schools towards more sustainable operations, monitor that and prove the impact.

Yet, as Hall himself notes, MATs do not appear at all in the sustainability strategy, with no reference to them requiring a sustainability lead.

He points out, too, that the education secretary, Nadhim Zahawi, did not mention them during his speech at the National History Museum to unveil the strategy, which Hall attended.

“In the White Paper and in his general announcements of the press, [Zahawi is] very committed to heading towards 100 per cent trust status over time [but] he didn’t mention multi-academy trusts, or trusts at all, in his speech.”

Knights at NGA also said she found this odd: “It is curious that, within four weeks of the DfE’s Schools White paper - with its vision of all schools joining a strong trust within the coming decade - the role of multi-academy trusts is completely missing from [the] strategy,” she said.

Good practice worth sharing

This does seem a notable oversight when you consider the examples of good practice out there among trusts in this area.

For example, Oasis Community Learning, formed of 52 primary, secondary and all-through academies, which boasts on its website of initiatives such as having installed 3,666 solar panels across 12 sites and having switched 41 locations to renewable energy.

It also says that by deploying a whopping 34,520 iPads to all students and staff, it estimates that in the first few months of the 2021-22 academic year alone, it saved 240 trees in paper and energy equivalent to running 304 residential fridges by reducing printing energy consumption.

Similarly, at Windsor Academy Trust (WAT), some £2 million has been spent on a raft of initiatives, such as fitting solar panels and LED lighting, installing double-glazed windows, improving insulation and upgrading energy management and monitoring systems. 

WAT chief executive Dawn Haywood said she thinks these sort of efforts prove that “MATs have a critical role to play in sustainability” and that although no specific references were made to them in the sustainability strategy, they will be as involved as any setting in this work by default.

“It’s great to see a policy paper from the DfE on sustainability and climate change, and my impression is that MATs have an important role to play in helping the DfE to shape and influence education’s response to sustainability and climate change through our innovation and work in this important area.”

Steve Rollett, deputy chief executive of the Confederation of School Trusts, concurred, saying he was not concerned by the lack of overt reference to trusts as he felt it was self-evident that they would be involved in this area.

“The issues addressed in the government’s sustainability strategy are of significance for all of us. It’s important that education, as with all parts of society, plays its part,” he said.

“Working together is written into the DNA of school trusts and we are already seeing a number of trusts leading the way, not only by increasing their curriculum focus on sustainability education but also by establishing more sustainable ways of operating.”

Going green

Certainly, given what MATs can achieve, it seems highly likely they will have a key role to play in any large-scale push towards sustainability in the sector - whether specified in the government’s official strategy or not.

Furthermore, initiatives such as this, and those seen at schools like St Christopher’s in Lancashire, will be exactly the sort of thing the government wants new sustainable leads to emulate and bring to their own settings. This may make the task a bit less daunting for anyone considering volunteering.

It’s also worth noting that with the widespread public awareness around the need to tackle the climate crisis, it may actually not prove too much of a struggle for settings to find teachers keen to take on the sustainable lead role - especially with people like Litherland acting as advocates for how much can be achieved in this domain.

What’s more, with carbon literacy training - and a network of schools and trusts in the vanguard of this area of school operations that are more than willing to share best practice - there could well be rapid upskilling in this area that delivers meaningful benefits across the sector by 2025 or before.

However, it’s also clear that anyone signing up should not underestimate the scale of the task in terms of the workload impact, the CPD required, and and the scrutiny that will come from governors, pupils and, of course, the government. 

But, as Kermit the Frog once famously said, it’s not easy being green.

Dan Worth is senior editor at Tes