Tilting at windmills


Tilting at windmills


In schools all over the country last week, the daily assembly was dominated by the climate change message, as teachers passed on the dire warnings contained in Sir Nicholas Stern's report.

How much of this well-intentioned preaching is actually reflected in the way our schools are built and managed? Is the education system part of the solution to climate change - or part of the problem?

Eco-Schools, the flagship programme to disseminate environmental good practice in schools, has awarded its green flag accreditation to just 54 secondary schools in England and northern Ireland - less than 2% of the total. Primary schools have a slightly better record, with 486 entitled to fly the flag - around 2.2%.

The Eco-Schools green flag programme is managed by Encams, the charity that also coordinates the Keep Britain Tidy campaign. Peter Gibson, from the charity, points out that the green flag represents the highest award level. Thousands of schools register with Eco-Schools without reaching green-flag status. But he accepts the programme has not had a significant impact on schools. "Teachers reflect society and there's a persuasion job to be done. We need to market the scheme better, but we don't have vast resources," he says. Encams's total budget for Eco-Schools is £324,000, with a £100,000 contribution from central government; a tiny fraction of the money spent on other initiatives.

Meanwhile, the government plans a 15-year programme (Building Schools for the Future) to rebuild or renovate every school, with sustainability built in from the start, at a cost in excess of £45bn.

"Sustainable development will not just be a subject in the classroom: it will be in the bricks and mortar and the way the school uses and even generates its own power," said the prime minister in 2004.

But in its evidence to the parliamentary select committee for education and skills this summer, the independent Sustainable Development Commission told MPs that the government "is not yet aware whether its capital investment programmes will result in the schools estate producing higher or lower carbon emissions, nor what the impact will be on water demand, waste production, traffic or other environmental factors. The communications of the delivery body, Partnerships for Schools, make scant reference to sustainable development."

It is possible to build a sustainable school within the available budget. In Telford, Gill Eatough has just taken over a building designed and built with sustainability in mind. Hadley Learning Centre has double glazing, photovoltaic panels, state-of-the-art ventilation and heat storage, a wood chip boiler, and a rainwater recovery system feeding the toilets.

"We did come under pressure to drop some of the sustainability features, but they are vital," she says. "All the systems can be accessed through the curriculum, so the young people see sustainability in action. Schools can have an impact on this issue - it's about priorities."

But other schools haven't been so fortunate. In evidence to the select committee, Allan Jarvis, deputy headteacher of Bradford's Buttershaw High School, told MPs funding constraints meant sustainability features were removed between the design and build stages of his school's scheme.

Bristol has some of the first BSF schools in operation. Three new schools - Bedminster Down, Monks Park and Fairfield High - do have sustainable features, including double glazing, and meet the standards for sustainability set by the government. But they do not have waste water reclamation, or micro power generation. They use conventional fuel sources.

"These schools don't appear to have made any great statement about sustainability," says Hugh Ellis, for the environmental pressure group Friends of the Earth."We should be aiming for carbon zero; that's important in schools because they are exemplars and they have long-term costs as public buildings," he says.

Carbon zero means a school makes no net contribution to global warming. Cassop primary in Durham has been carbon zero for some time, in a building that is almost a century old. Cassop has cut its carbon emissions by using a host of renewable sources and energy efficiency measures. There's a 50Kw wind turbine in the school field, photovoltaic panels on the roof and a school boiler fed by recycled wood.

"We are an exemplar school," says headteacher Jim McManners. "We have a constant demand from schools wanting to see the site, but we get no funding from government for the environmental work."

The sense of fighting against the flow is echoed in Shropshire, where Worthen primary has just had a ground heat pump system installed. Water is pumped into the ground to take advantage of the higher temperatures below the surface, then back to the school's boiler. There is an energy saving of around 70%. "It's expensive to install, but over the life of the school it will make a difference," says Worthen's head, Jerry Hughes. "The benefits are enormous, to the environment, to the kids. The biggest job is trying to incorporate it into the curriculum: many teachers are rooted to targets."

"Climate change needs to be central to the curriculum," says Jim McManners in Durham. "Here at Cassop we would like to widen the impact; we are hoping to persuade the local community to become a solar village, where every house had some kind of involvement in renewable energy. If we could do that I think we could feel that we were making a difference, but it feels like an uphill struggle at times."

Use and abuse

· Britain's 40,000 school buildings are responsible for a quarter of the public sector's energy costs and 15% of all public-sector carbon emissions.

· The 'school run' accounts for a significant proportion of traffic emissions, with 40% of primary and 20% of secondary children driven to school.

· A large secondary school uses two million sheets of A4 paper in a year.

· Schools spend £70m a year on water; an average of £2,500 a school.

· There is currently no DfES standard for the resource efficiency of existing schools, though there is one for new buildings. Advice on energy efficiency and sustainability can be found at: www.eco-schools.org.uk and www.teachernet.gov.uk/sustainableschools