Schools climate action guide and template

There are many things schools can do to help tackle the climate emergency. You can reduce your own greenhouse gas emissions. You can use your role to influence behaviours in schools and communities. You can also help adapt to changes in the climate. Creating a school climate action plan is an important first step. 

This guide and accompanying template have been created to help your school do that. It will also help to fulfil the requirement set by the Department for Education‘s (DfE) sustainability and climate change strategy for education. The DfE strategy states that “By 2025, all education settings will have nominated a sustainability lead and put in place a climate action plan”.

The guide is divided into the following sections:

1. Why you need a school climate action plan
2. Making your climate action plan
3. How to complete your climate action plan template
4. Establishing your school's carbon baseline
5. Decarbonisation
6. Biodiversity
7. Climate education and green careers
8. Resilience and adaptation
9. Active and sustainable travel
10. Air quality
11. Waste, consumption and recycling
12. Food
13. Putting your climate plan into action
14. Schools climate newsletter
15. Further resources

Download climate action guide template with examples ^{(docx, 2.2mb)}

Download an accesible PDF version of these webpages (Nov 2024) ^{(pdf, 642kb)}