DfE climate strategy needs more money and urgency

Schools' climate campaign Let’s Go Zero has responded to the Department for Education’s Sustainability and Climate Change strategy, saying it ‘must do better, far, far quicker’.  

Let’s Go Zero has more than 1,200 UK schools, colleges and nurseries signed up so far, all sharing the goal to be zero carbon by 2030. It represents over 104,000 teachers and nearly 620,000 pupils.

Let's Go Zero was invited to input to the strategy and while they recognise that it includes several steps in the right direction, it does not go anywhere near far enough, fast enough in the face of a climate emergency.

Harriet Lamb, CEO of climate charity Ashden which leads the Let’s Go Zero campaign, says: “We welcome many aspects of this strategy, including our suggestions that every school have a Climate Action Plan, a Sustainability Lead, and include sustainability and climate change in teacher training. But providing schools with the means to decarbonise quickly was glaringly absent in the strategy.”

Let's Go Zero want the Department of Education to commit to other key policies, including an urgent retrofit of the school estate and to commit to all schools being zero carbon by 2030.

“We must invest now in a national programme to retrofit the nation’s schools. Providing adequate funding for action now will save hard-pressed school budgets as fuel prices are sky rocketing, boost local businesses, create new jobs, and support the government’s net zero and levelling-up targets,” continues Lamb.