Climate Change & Sustainability

What is Climate Change?

A change in global or regional acclimate patterns, attributed largely to the increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide produce the use of fossil fuels.

There are many factors that can make the Earth warmer and colder including:

• greenhouse gases caused by human activity,

• deforestation, where more than half of the world’s surface has been ploughed and paved,

• ozone layer trapping heat closer to the Earth’s surface

• different types of air pollution which have different effects on the atmosphere.

The challenge of climate change is formidable. For children and young people to meet it with determination, and not with despair, we must offer them not just truth, but also hope. Learners need to know the truth about climate change – through knowledge-rich education. They must also be given the hope that they can be agents of change, through hands-on activity, guidance and programmes, allowing them to pursue a green career pathway in their chosen field (DFE 2023).

What can we do?

The DFE has called on all education sectors to create a sustainability climate action plan to show how we, as a school community, can support national and international initiatives which are aimed at protecting the world through direct climate action. As a school, we have important role to play in this, particularly reducing our environmental footprint to work towards net zero and giving all children, young people and adults the knowledge and skills to thrive in the green economy and to help restore nature.

Through their learned and lived experiences from early years to Year 6, our children will develop a broad knowledge and understanding of the importance of nature, sustainability and the causes and impact of climate change and to translate this knowledge into positive action and solutions.

Through our sustainability climate action plan, we will engage directly with children and young people who are passionate about the natural world, want to do their best to protect it and can influence their wider communities.