Is environmental sustainability one of your board’s strategic priorities?

The National Governance Association (NGA) has been asking their members what they are doing to make climate change and sustainability a priority for 2024.

The NGA note that a third of schools have not yet taken action and reminds schools that there are many others across the education sector, in universities and the green sector who are ready to support school and trust leadership around this topic.

The NGA identifies the board’s role as covering three main actions:

1. Ensuring that this topic is on the agenda and asking if it is a strategic priority for the coming year. They suggest that it is better to have a sixth priority than decide the planet has to go on the backburner while dealing with more obviously urgent issues, of which there will be many. They ask what would your stakeholders say: have you consulted and involved pupils? Young people’s voices are important and their continuing involvement is paramount.
2. Identifying sustainability leaders, both for education and the business/premises aspects, ensuring they have time and resources to develop a climate action plan. This means ensuring all members of staff have the time to go on CPD relevant to their part in this work.
3. Third, agree and monitor the plan which the Department for Education in its own sustainability and climate change strategyis expecting all schools to develop.

For a very quick and simple explanation of the strategy, aims and two of the initiatives watch the following.