GDST Staff recognised through International Sustainability Award

Schools across the GDST have achieved the eduCCate Global Bronze Award, an international climate literacy programme designed to build schools’ confidence and capacity to deliver high impact, solution focused climate change education.

Melanie Harwood, co-founder of the not-for-profit, eduCCate Global, explains, “eduCCate Global wants every school and every teacher to be equipped to inspire and empower students to succeed in our climate-challenged world. We are so very pleased to be partnering with the Girls’ Day School Trust to bring this vision to life in your schools. Today, 349,000 schools are part of our growing family. The Girls’ Day School Trust schools that have achieved our Bronze Award, have become beacons for climate and carbon literacy and climate action in their communities and models for schools everywhere.”

“The Girls’ Day School Trust schools that have achieved our Bronze Award, have become beacons for climate and carbon literacy and climate action in their communities and models for schools everywhere.”

Schools have completed the award against the backdrop of the release of the Department for Education’s first Sustainability and Climate Change Strategy, which states that by 2025, every education setting will have a nominated “sustainability lead”.

To complete the award, each school was required to build a Sustainability and Climate Literacy Leadership Team, composed of six members of staff from across the school community. One of the strengths of the programme was bringing together colleagues from teaching and support functions in school to learn together, champion sustainable causes and support students to feel empowered to ‘be the change’ in their community.

Pupil agency, giving students voice and choice in how they learn, sits at the heart of the award and schools across GDST showed great creativity and innovation throughout the Carbon Buster Footprint challenges, where students championed the reduction of carbon footprints.  Students at Belvedere Academy set up a clothes swap, whilst at Oxford High School they planted apple trees and learnt how to press and produce the juice to fundraise for green projects.

Many congratulations to colleagues from 15 GDST schools who have completed the Award.

 

Sustainability at the GDST

Completion of the eduCCate Bronze Award, is one of several initiatives supporting the GDST ambition to reduce its carbon footprint. Our work includes a strategy to deliver Net Zero by 2050, and we have already achieved CarbonNeutral® Organisation certification. We achieved this by off-setting our carbon footprint whilst we work towards significant reductions in our energy use.  A dynamic green thread of sustainability is woven through everything we do and our One strategy aims to capture and amplify this holistic approach.

Discover more about sustainability at the GDST