What a year for GSR (Green Schools Revolution)!
As the end of term rolls around, let us look back at some of the standout moments for some of our GSR projects over the last year, from Wilding plan sessions to workshops with our CAPs team. This blog will explore all four strands and what they have been up to this last year,
Wilding Schools –
Over the last year the Wilding Schools project has brought successes and joy to schools around the UK and our only hope is that this continues into 2026 and beyond. In the last year of Wilding Schools, they have been able deliver assemblies and onboardings, both in person and online and 12 Wilding Plan Sessions with various wildlife trusts and local ecology support. These wilding plan sessions have allowed us to help over 150 students to reintroduce biodiversity to their school grounds and to hold open conversations with these students of how they are able to include the teachings of Wilding Schools into their lessons and curriculum.
As mentioned, Wilding Schools works with many external partners to run sessions for the students and the project, and this has come with much positive response from our schools including those at King Alfred’s who stated that “The external influence provides bonus motivation to senior leaders to allow actions to be taken on site. It has brought positive media attention to the school, leading to our club featuring in local newspapers and regional news.” It is so great to hear from school staff that the project is running so well at some of their schools, and this is testament to the team running this project!
There have been many great achievements over the year for Wilding Schools one of these includes when Wilding delivered their first in person assembly to the pupils of St Vincent’s – which is Specialist School for Sensory Impairment and Other Needs. During this in person session the team ensured they adapted delivery in order engage students, whether that be through sounds which related to their presentation or with objects to demonstrate different ecosystems and plants which they could introduce to their school grounds.
Into the next academic year, the Wilding Schools project is hoping to continue to implement plans to help schools wild 30% of their grounds and continue with frequent school catch ups and sessions.
Teach the Teacher –
Teach the Teacher has had another packed year with a total of 1038 teachers trained through sessions delivered by young people, these teachers were trained in colleges, universities and at various events.
Throughout this year, Teach the Teacher has adapted delivery of the programme to reach a wider audience, and one of these ways was through the trialled delivery of Teach the Teacher to trainee teachers on PGCE courses. Through running these PGCE sessions, Teach the Teacher was able to deliver to King’s College London and UCL. This successful delivery has meant that Teach the Teacher will continue to roll out PGCE training into the next year!
This wasn’t the only adaptation to delivery but through an increased connection with local councils, Teach the Teacher was able to work with councils such as South Lanarkshire. This council who alongside Monitoring and Evaluating Climate Communication & Education project (MECCE) delivered sessions across South Lanarkshire and enabled those students who participated in Teach the Teach to be part of a 2-day digital climate storytelling workshop.
Another amazing success of Teach the Teacher this year was that they were invited along to many events, such as the Festival of Education and the sustainability and environmental education conference. By attending these events, this allowed the promotion and delivery of sessions to teachers at events across the UK.
In terms of what is next for Teach the Teacher, after the successful trialling at the end of this academic year, in addition to secondary schools and colleges, next year they’re offering Teach the Teacher to both primary schools and universities (for PGCE courses) too! And they will be working more some councils and multi-academy trusts to deliver TTT (Teach The Teacher) across multiple schools at once, creating a community effort and chance for peer-to-peer support and learnings, so we can agree there is exciting changes to be made through this project in trying to promote more discussions of climate into our education settings.
Future Forum –
Future Forum had its formal launch in December 2023. 10 organisations joined this launch and there are currently 16 young representatives, with more in the process of being selected and joining.
For co-chairs Jodie and Jamie, there have been some stand out moments as noted since starting the project they have found that:
“Starting work on the youth voice audit has been really exciting, and seeing young people from the forum actively want to play a role in its development has been really rewarding”.
They also discussed that whilst the forum is small engagement is good and they enjoyed the first meeting with the CEOs and young people, and they are enjoying the way Future Forum has developed into the project that it now is.
In terms of what is coming next for Future Forum they are hosting their first in person meeting at the end of July and are electing two new co-chairs, they will continue to work with all the organisations in the forum to improve youth leadership in the sector and to learn from each other sharing best practices.
Climate Action Plans –
CAPs have also been very busy this year, they have been working with 12 schools ranging from mainstream to PRU settings. For CAPs they have noted that it ‘has been inspirational to watch our youth-led work come alive in classrooms all around the country’.
The CAPs team have been working hard to develop a wide range of engaging in-person and virtual activities to help develop students' knowledge, skills and confidence in all things sustainability to help inspire and empower then to transform their ideas into a student-led school climate action plan!
For CAPs they designed workshops around four key themes, Decarbonisation, Green Jobs and Careers, Biodiversity, and Adaptation and Resilience. This year CAPs were able to deliver 52 engagement activities and adapted their delivery so that students are still passionate about building their schools’ CAP (Climate Action Plan) and do not want to miss out, through their fast-track approach.
We’ve been enhancing students learning experience by exposing them to experts in the field and giving them face-to-face time to learn from climate scientists, energy auditors and biodiversity experts. All participating schools have also received a free energy audit and report with recommendations that feed into the CAP and help identify opportunities for decarbonising their estate!
The CAPs team has grown from strength to strength, and they now have 6 student staff CAP coordinators, with one more soon to join the team. The passion and dedication from the team has enabled CAPs to propel the project forward and deliver a range of engaging activities! Molly shares her thoughts about her experience as a CAP coordinator so far:
“The most rewarding part of this job for me is encouraging the growth of a new mindset around climate change in youth. Even in students that know a lot about the intricacies of climate change, often there is a lack of belief that we have any power to change anything. Helping students realise that their voice matters and helping them find their own personal source of motivation for environmental work is the most rewarding part of the job for me” Molly Scrase-Kings, CAPs Coordinator
CAPs have also shared that they are really excited to have formed a successful partnership with East Norfolk College in their target area of Great Yarmouth and are currently trialling a new adapted 'train the trainer' approach for CAPs. This involves training, empowering and supporting college students to deliver CAPs to their local secondary schools.
Into the next year CAPs are looking forward to working with another 12 schools and exploring with students and staff how we can increase the impact of their climate action in the wider school community, local area and beyond!
Green Schools Revolution (GSR) is a three-year project launched in January 2023, hosted by SOS-UK and funded by the #iwill Fund. We help school pupils to green their schools as part of the Department for Education's (DfE) Climate Change and Sustainability Strategy.
The #iwill Fund is made possible thanks to £66 million joint investment from The National Lottery Community Fund and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to support young people to access high quality social action opportunities.