S4TP Sustainable Schools puts youth voice at the heart of a School Trusts’ decision making process on sustainability and their climate action plans. We empower young people to be part of the conversation and know they have been listened to.
Following the success of our pilot with Mercia Trust earlier this year and our experience enabling youth voice in decision making at various organisations, we are launching a new offer to help schools across the UK create Sustainability Action Plans inspired by their students’ interests, insights and priorities.
S4TP Sustainable Schools enables a school and its senior leadership team (SLT), including governors, to learn what its students’ concerns and ideas are for how the school should tackle the climate crisis and work towards net zero.
Working with a group of up to 80 students over the course of a day, S4TP facilitates a fun and educational day for the SL and governors to hear their students’ suggestions for simple changes that could be made at the school.
Mercia Trust Case Study
In April 2022 the Solutions for the Planet (S4TP) team facilitated a student conference for the Mercia Learning Trust on the theme of sustainability in schools. This was the first of our new S4TP Sustainable Schools programme!
Mercia Learning Trust is a multi-academy trust of six schools in Sheffield, 3 Primary and 3 Secondary. We were tasked with running their first student conference alongside their Festival of Education. Our aim was to empower 60 students from the schools to contribute their ideas on how their schools could be more sustainable. We explored what sustainability is and what it means to these young people, invited them to assess the existing sustainability plans in place in their schools, and challenged them to imagine the ideal sustainability policies by creating their school of the future.
The students were very engaged throughout the day, and worked thoughtfully and collaboratively to produce action plans on how they would make their schools more sustainable, which they were able to present to a panel of industry professionals and senior leaders from across the Trust.
During our pilot day at Mercia Trust, teams of students in Key Stage 2, 3 and 4 identified the sustainability challenges at their schools (using our audit tool in advance) and created a personalised action plan for their Trust to take on board.
Some ideas included:
- Creating more green spaces surrounding the schools, to increase biodiversity and learn about nature in their immediate environment.
- Using grey water (collected from drains and rooves) to flush toilets.
- Considering the materials used in the school uniforms they were required to purchase (as they were predominantly made from manmade materials such as polyester).
- Utilising the location of certain schools, e.g., on the top of a hill, to generate power with a wind turbine.
- Streamlining some of the great practices they had in some schools across the whole school estate of the Trust (such as lights turning on and off with motion sensors; recycling points across the school specifically for paper).
Following the brilliant work of the young people and their teachers who took part in this conference, and the senior leadership team they present to, some promising and significant changes have been made to Mercia Learning Trust school buildings to make them more sustainable. Many of the schools are pursuing brilliant eco groups and getting in to planting on their sites, as well as plans for a sustainability lead. Well done everyone who took part!
“From the initial planning stages to the final execution of the conference, the Solutions for the Planet team were professional, organised, and highly skilled in their approach. They worked closely with us to tailor the conference to our specific needs and requirements, and were always available to answer any questions or concerns we had.
The conference itself was a tremendous success, with students from our schools coming together to share their ideas and insights on sustainability and how we can all work together to create a more sustainable future. The Solutions for the Planet team facilitated the conference with great skill, ensuring that all participants had a chance to contribute, and that the discussions remained focused and productive.
Overall, we were extremely impressed with the level of service and support provided by Solutions for the Planet, and would highly recommend them to any other schools looking to engage their students in discussions around sustainability and environmental responsibility.”
Head of Development & Engagement, Mercia Learning Trust
Why work with S4TP Sustainable Schools?
Our Sustainable Schools offer is a fantastic way for your School or Trust to:
- Involve your students in thinking and decision-making about how to make your school more sustainable in 6 key areas of energy, travel, water, biodiversity/nature, food and waste management.
- Identify opportunities to connect learning with your built environment and school estate.
- Facilitate conversations between SLT, governors and students around the climate crisis, sustainability and how your school can play its part.
- Provide an opportunity for students across different year groups to work together on a specific project.
- Understand what really matters to your student community in relation to sustainability and your role within it.
What does S4TP Sustainable Schools involve?
We work with each School or Multi-Academy Trust to design a bespoke programme of support depending on what you need, but each programme includes:
- An opportunity for students to use our Sustainable Schools audit tool to assess what’s good and not so good about their school in 6 key areas that directly relate to the curriculum and known priorities for schools (energy, water, waste management, biodiversity/nature, food and travel).
- A facilitated day with up to 80 students, SLT and governors to discuss results from the audit, identify priority areas and come up with ideas and objectives to tackle the issues of most concern to the students that can feed into an action plan (of suggestions for the school).
- Follow up with SLT and governors to decide on which actions they will take forward and finalise an action plan, with support as needed.
- A report and case study on what the School / Trust has achieved.
Want to find out more?
If you’re interested in discussing how we could support your School or Trust to develop its own sustainability action plan please complete our expression of interest form below, or email fran@solutionsfortheplanet.co.uk .