Setting the standards: Sustainable Schools
It’s pretty clear that embedding sustainability in schools is among the most crucial steps to a better future. But how does all this influence children, and the adults they become? Giles Crosse investigates.
There’s an obvious link between a sustainable education and a sustainable world. Patterns developed in our childhood remain throughout adult life, so helping build a better future by getting today’s youngsters off to the best start should be among our top priorities.
But what is the true impact of a ‘sustainable school’, and what does the term even mean? One thing that’s plain is that worldwide, the ethos behind sustainability and education appears to be gaining pace.
In New Zealand for example, the Enviroschools programme is just one of many initiatives aiming to embed sustainability more firmly in global education systems. ‘They can be catalysts for change and centres of innovation and community development,’ explains the resource. ‘Enviroschools is all about empowering young people to create a world that works.’
Real world practices inspired by Enviroschools include things like the Recyclopaedia. It’s a set of craft projects which can be created entirely from everyday household waste.
Chief Executive of SIFT, Linda Norris, is delighted that the awareness of recycling is being brought to the country’s youngest consumers via the Recyclopaedia. She notes “It teaches young minds to be aware of where what they buy will ultimately end up as well as having a lot of fun along the way.”
Lots of other work is going on. In March 2010 the Enviroschools network was set to coordinate ‘A week long festival celebrating sustainable and innovative activity for our world. ReGeneration is about thousands of young people (and not so young people!) connected across Aotearoa and Te Waipounamu.’
It planned to develop ‘intergenerational collaboration, about vision, and about having a sense of place and purpose. It’s about action in and for our communities.’
All of this sounds like good work. But how much concrete research exists illustrating the actual measurable impact of such steps on young minds?
Proving the practice
A recently released UK report, ‘Evidence of impact of sustainable schools,’ aims to find out exactly this. Created by the Department for Children, Schools and Families, there are some interesting conclusions within.
‘Evidence of the impact of sustainable schools is supported by growing research, policy, and practitioner literature, in the main from the UK but also internationally.’ reveals the overview.
On a more detailed basis, Ofsted, which inspects and regulates education quality in the UK, observed:
‘Ofsted (2009) visited 14 schools over a three year period and found that their focus on sustainability had a wide range of positive consequences. Sustainability captured the interest of young people because they could see its relevance to their own lives and futures.’
‘There was evidence of an increase in knowledge and understanding of the importance of leading more sustainable lives, and there were examples of more positive attitudes to learning, better behaviour and attendance, and improved standards and achievement.’
‘Importantly, the findings show that sustainability was a significant factor in improving teaching and learning in these schools.’
Whilst these results may seem obvious to long term proponents of sustainability, they remain crucial in advancing global education, as without such documents governments feel unable to advance sustainable teaching in schools and earmark the funding required to support this.
However, another key element determines how effective sustainability in education may be. There appears to be evidence that poverty impacts massively on the quality of education children receive and their performance. What, if anything, might sustainable practices do to alleviate this?
Cash corrections
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) is a charity, researching social problems and needs and identifying ways to overcome them. Its March 2010 document, ‘Poorer children's educational attainment: how important are attitudes and behaviour’ contains some unsettling findings.
‘By age 11, only 74 per cent of children from the poorest fifth of families reached the expected educational level compared with 97 per cent of children from the richest fifth,’ explains JRF. ‘This could, in part, be explained by parental aspirations and attitudes to education, which vary significantly depending on their economic and social position.’
Alissa Goodman, co author of the report, said: “This research reiterates the strong link between poverty and low educational attainment. The gap between rich and poor children is already large at the age of three, but it continues to widen in the primary and early secondary years.”
“Such adverse attitudes to education are one of the single most important factors associated with lower educational attainment at age eleven,” explained Helen Barnard, JRF Programme Manager.
“These findings suggest that if more focus was put on improving aspirations and attitudes during the primary and early secondary years, it could make a big difference in the gap between rich and poor children’s attainment.”
‘Evidence of impact of sustainable schools’ supports these concepts. ‘Research for the NASUWT (Broadhurst et al., 2008) shows that the quality of the physical environment surrounding the school affects behaviour within schools, and also attendance, academic achievement and parental support.’
So whilst sustainability in schools can positively impact on tomorrow’s generations, it needs to take place within a context of overall educational quality to be effective. If schools are poorly maintained, or playgrounds dirty, sustainability teaching is less well equipped to do its best work.
‘Thomas and Thomson (2004) found that the worse a local environment looks, the less children are able to play freely, and develop the habits and commitments that will enable them to address environmental problems in the future,’ remarks ‘Evidence of impact of sustainable schools’.
Sadly then, it appear sustainable teaching alone isn’t able to make a difference without a sustainable environment within which to teach, something of a chicken and egg scenario surely familiar to teachers worldwide.
Maybe cash might be diverted from military programmes dating back to the Cold War, or through streamlining public services, to push more support into what’s really important, quality education for tomorrow’s generations.
Resources:
Poorer children’s educational attainment: how important are attitudes and behaviour?
Evidence of Impact of Sustainable Schools
Video:
Despite that age old piece of advice to ‘never work with children or animals’, the benefits of working with children in new school design is actually highly recommended. With a natural interest in their own environment, children are best placed to define what work and what doesn’t in terms of the space in which they spend so much of their young lives.
Led by Land Surveyor Alison Watson and Architect Dan Gibson, the north west based classofyourown® team brings extensive experience in private and public sector construction projects to provide authentic workshop activities bringing “the sustainable classroom” to life.
With a new school already designed as part of the Building Schools for the Future programme, students from Abraham Moss High School were keen to raise awareness of school and community environmental issues before they made the move from old to new. They needed to find ways to engage their peers and inject a large dose of environmentalism; to get other children to see that being green is not nerdy, but it’s actually cool and will never go out of fashion.
Their ventures started with challenge to design an Eco Classroom.
Students formed their own companies and became Directors, Marketing Managers, Architects, Surveyors and Landscape Designers, all investigating ideas which would conclude in the design of a single stand alone ‘Environmental Resource Centre’. The classroom sized building, with its own external learning landscape, had a brief to provide a facility for the school and its wider community where environmental issues could be taught in cross curricular subjects, and the community would be encouraged and inspired to address and adopt green issues and lifestyles.
Some amazing designs were created, all of which focussed sustainability as the number one priority. Furthermore, students, in working with professionals, were able to take part in BSF pupil consultation sessions and could understand the plans they saw and comment on changes they noticed. They went on to confidently discuss their own ideas and concerns with BSF planners promoting excellent feedback from architects and Manchester City Council representatives .
Unfortunately, the plan to build was shelved, however the students continued working with classofyourown® to engage with a wide range of industry professionals and have a clearer understanding of the school design and construction process.
Firstly, they had to understand what makes a school sustainable. The bigger picture, not just issues surrounding the three ‘R’s – reduce, reuse, recycle. And what does ‘sustainability’ actually mean?
There are many ways in which the corporate sector defines sustainability, and many definitions are complex and often derived of the ‘cut and paste Google’ genre. The Abraham Moss students defined sustainability as simply “finding ways to care for life on Earth (where CARE is the operative word)”; we don’t need to be radical in the way we approach sustainable living, but we can all be a little more considerate in the way we make decisions.
The students took ownership and responsibility for each one of the DCSF’s ‘Eight Doorways, and took to the corridors armed with a notepad and a camera, recording ‘the good, the bad and the ugly’ features of their school environment. Each team presented the challenges they faced, the strengths and weaknesses of their school, the options they had to deal with each problem, and threat of doing nothing.
Not only did this task support student inclusion in the school management process, but it brought to life everyday solutions to a wide range of environmental issues. The students collaborated to agree goals and values, communicating these to their peers and agreeing ways to perform designated individual and group tasks. From recycling to responsible procurement, the students learned that they could have a positive impact on the future of their education and their planet, driving change in their schools’ policies through a bottom up strategy.
The children of Abraham Moss High School are driving change in sustainable thinking from the learner’s perspective, taking valuable ideas and environmental concerns to school stakeholders and decision makers. By engaging with the learner voice, head teachers and managers can create a sustainable legacy influenced by the young people who are defining their future within the school.
