Climate Action Plans:
Creating opportunities for secondary school pupils to green their schools.
The 2022 DfE Climate Change and Sustainability Strategy has advised that all schools in England will need to have a Climate Action Plan (CAP) in place from 2025, but has not provided specific guidance or templates to assist schools in their creation.
We work closely with schools, facilitating teams of pupils to lead the development of a CAP for their school. Pupils leading on their CAP work alongside a professional energy auditor to complete an energy audit of their school, receive support from The Wildlife Trusts to build nature and biodiversity into their CAPs and get the opportunity to have a real-life climate scientist visit their school. We hope that this will serve as a best practice example for CAP roll-out across the country.
XP Gateshead
CAP Coordinator Gemma has been working with XP Gateshead in Newcastle to adapt CAPs to their school, where the national curriculum is taught within expeditions or to help answer a key question. Since Autumn 2023, a range of in person and online workshops have been delivered, such as workshops around green jobs and careers with an engaged group of year 9's, a visit from a professional energy auditor on decarbonisation, and fortnightly sessions to focus on exactly what the school want their CAP to look like. The vast amount of enthusiasm from the young people has been so inspiring and we are very excited to see their CAP form!
We’re helping students to create Climate Action Plans in 12 schools across England and Wales:
St Mary’s Catholic High School, Preston
This school wanted to take part in both our CAPs and Wilding strands of GSR and we approached this with a collaborative approach, intertwining both projects together. Two SOS-UK student staff visited the school in January running a series of engagements to introduce the project to the students. During the day we ran an introductory ‘onboarding’ session with the school’s already established eco-club, which has representation from across all year groups. By the end of the session the students were already starting to think about what they do already in school, but more importantly fueled with ideas and inspiration about what else they could be doing in school – and have started the foundation of their CAP! Next our student staff delivered an Assembly to the year 8’s complimented by an afternoon visioning activity, encouraging students to think about school climate action and embedding the project message.
Latest updates
How is Green Schools Revolution celebrating #iwill Week this November?
All strands of Green Schools Revolution have been hard at work this autumn term to make their education more sustainable.
Green Schools Revolution Shared Learning Event at the University of Plymouth!
In an exciting day for schools in the south-west, students who have been taking part in GSR over the last year came together to learn from each other. CAPs student staff member Lucy Davies shares her experiences.
