Education Business

Sustainability and the environment are fast becoming issues that schools can’t ignore. The government launched its sustainable schools strategy in 2006 as a means of aligning its existing priorities for schools with a vision of a sustainable future for children and communities. Pupils engage readily with the environment on the curriculum, and there are a number of examples of sustainable schools across the country addressing serious local problems around health, crime and the environment.
    
To establish exactly what schools themselves contribute to the problem of climate change, DCSF asked the Sustainable Development Commission to look into the carbon emissions from England’s 23,000 schools. The resulting report, Carbon Emissions from Schools: Where they arise and how to reduce them, finds that greenhouse gases are currently estimated at 9.4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year.

Emission sources
While heat and power used in school buildings predictably account for a high proportion of those emissions - 37 per cent - there were also some surprises. 45 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions were found to come from the supply chain activities of companies providing goods and services to schools. Pupil and staff travel, and school transport were responsible for 16 per cent of greenhouse gases, while waste management and minimisation accounted for around 2 per cent.
    
These emissions are projected to decrease by less than one fifth over the period to 2050, which is not enough to play a leading role in reducing schools’ impact on dangerous climate change, and falls way short of the national target of 60 per cent. The Sustainable Development Commission is recommending that schools should commit to halving their emissions by 2020 – and that, as a first step towards establishing this aim with schools, DCSF adopts the same aim for its own operations.
    
We are not for one moment saying that this will be easy. Meeting this target will require bold decisions and decisive action across every area of the footprint. It will mean an extensive programme of improvements to school buildings to cater for much greater energy efficiency and low carbon energy generation. It will call for changes to travel patterns, and intense scrutiny of procurement contracts. And it will mean a wide range of professionals working together to deliver joined-up solutions that go far beyond the school gate. More than anything, it will require schools being supported in their decisions to buy or build more sustainably.

Working together
This, of course, means that we don’t expect schools to act alone. A great deal of dedicated support will be needed from central government – not just DCSF, but the Treasury, Department for Transport and the Department for Communities and Local Government, amongst others. Regionally and locally, the support of a range of professionals in transport, town planning and procurement will all be crucial.
    
Schools themselves will need to put sustainability at the heart of their operations if they are to have a hope of meeting this target. We believe it will pay enormous dividends, not least in terms of the potential financial savings from increasing energy efficiency, reducing water consumption and minimising waste. With energy prices rising, this will become more and more important.
    
Schools may well find that building up networks – working together with other schools, and tapping into the information and support environmental organisations have to offer – can make it a less lonely slog. Working with others can help generate ideas, increase buying power, and increase schools’ influence on local authorities.

Academic achievement
Beyond the economic case, schools have the potential to become beacons of good practice, showcasing what this means for pupils, staff and communities. As a learning exercise it has the capacity to speak directly to pupils. Experience in other countries has shown how this can increase motivation and reduce truancy, as well as increase academic achievement. As schools often lie at the centre of local communities, a commitment to achieving positive change will raise awareness of low-carbon lifestyles with pupils and the wider community of parents, carers and community groups. By building sustainability into procurement contracts, they have the potential to achieve what few others could in terms of influencing sustainable behaviour in the hundreds of businesses servicing schools’ needs.
    
Existing work on areas such as capital investment, nutritional standards and school travel planning are already offering the opportunity to take a totally fresh approach to a range of issues, and we believe this is the ideal time to put carbon reduction at the centre of schools’ decision making. DCSF is making plans for all new school buildings to be zero carbon by 2016 – an excellent initiative that we’re pleased to be involved with.
    
As the SDC’s 2007 report Every Child’s Future Matters showed, climate change is not only a concern to children and young people, it has the potential to undermine their future prosperity and life chances. Reducing school carbon emissions now, enabling schools to prepare themselves for future climate change impacts, and preparing young people to take action in their personal and professional lives, must all be critical goals for schools.

For more information
Carbon Emissions from Schools: Where they arise and how to reduce them is available to download from
www.sd-commission.org.uk .