Sustainable Schools

1. Sustainable Schools Educating pupils for Sustainable Development

2. What’s been happening? • UN made 2004- 2014 the decade for Education for Sustainable Development, wanting all countries to start educating its citizens on the importance of sustainability. • UK 2006- Year for Sustainable Schools, launching the Sustainable Schools Strategy, which outlines that it wants all schools to be sustainable schools by 2020(!) • In order for schools to be seen as ‘sustainable’, they must address 8 ‘doorways’.

3. The 8 doorways • Food & drink • Energy & water • Travel & traffic • Purchasing & waste • Buildings & grounds • Inclusion & participation • Local well-being • Global dimension

4. Where are schools in this process? • Take up in English schools very slow • Most schools relying on science, geog and design to deliver these doorways • UN and Ofsted want it to be addressed across the whole curriculum, and across whole school ethos • Schools asked to show their progress via the SEF 3 (s3) • Ofsted inspected 41 schools in 2007/8 specifically on their sustainable schools practice, results disappointing, especially in areas of curriculum delivery and addressing the global dimension. • Primary schools doing much better as they are able to teach more cross curricularly

5. Where is JHGS? • Schools participating in Eco – Schools doing very well due to large overlap of 8 doorways and the Eco-schools criteria. JHGS now awaiting inspection for highest level of Eco- schools – the green flag • Only 750 schools across the UK at this level, most of those are primary • We are addressing waste, recycling, water, electricity, biodiversity, inclusion, healthy schools • SS works as an umbrella strategy covering other initiatives such as Healthy Schools, Every Child Matters, Extended Schools, Building Schools for the Future, travel Plan etc. Addressing SS will allow us to move further on these other initiatives also.

6. What do we need to do? • We need to make clear which areas of SS each department addresses, in each year group, much as our SOWs show how we address citizenship across our subjects. This way we can fill in our s3 accordingly • Thus in Year 7 the French department may address the francophonic countries, and spend some time addressing the global dimension through discussing poverty in other parts of the world, and the flooding implications of global warming on them. Year 9 in German starts with the environment topic, addressing climate change, waste and recycling and living a greener lifestyle, which is expanded upon in the spring term in y11 and in the spring term in y12

7. How do we do this? • We already address a lot of these strands in our curriculum – we just have to make it explicit what we do • We need to look at our curriculum and be creative about thinking how we could add in other strands, and luckily.. • The government have already researched it for us on the teachernet.gov site: • http://www.teachernet.gov.uk/sustainableschools/teaching/teaching_info_detail.cfm?id=13 • http://www.teachernet.gov.uk/sustainableschools/teaching/teaching_info_detail.cfm?id=50 • We would like to have this information in by Oct 1st to help us start filling in s3.