Dr Nasreen Majid (Associate Professor of Education, School Director of Recruitment and Admissions interested in all aspects of teaching and learning of mathematics within the primary age range)

About the School

Headteacher: Mr Jim Dees; Sustainability Leader: Ms Sannelieke (Sanne) Verburg-Aldrich

 

Westlodge is a large primary school in North West London. The school caters for a diverse and vibrant community. The school’s nurturing ethos enables all members of the school community to thrive and achieve their potential. The school is three form entry, with specialist provision for pupils on the autistic spectrum, enabling pupils on the autistic spectrum to access specialist facilities within a mainstream setting. The school were recognised as Global Change Makers as part of an Art- Inside out Project , as part of an initiative commissioned by the Eden Project. This link has been developed through accessing the Eden Project’s Change Makers CPD.

Sustainability Education at West Lodge

My visit to West Lodge was a full day of presenting in assemblies and meeting pupils and staff to understand the values driven approach to sustainability education. My immediate impression was how the pupils’ spoke confidently about aspects of sustainability and had a broad knowledge, understanding and insight into the climate emergency. My assembly presentation created good points for conversation to enable pupils to showcase the work they do as part of their curriculum provision.

Pupils knew about Greta Thunberg and how climate activism can and does enable change. I showcased climate activist Vanessa Nakate from Uganda and Lesean Mutunkei from Kenya to highlight the global change makers. I used this, firstly to provide the breath of climate activism, being led by young people across the world but also to support and empower the pupils at West Lodge to understand that they too are climate activist! Building agency with your pupils is an integral aspect of developing a sustainable mindset. This position is critical in pupil wellbeing and supporting them with eco-anxiety. During my Q&A time in assemblies, pupils shared their anxieties around the climate crisis. Walshe, Moula, and Lee (2022) have used the term eco-capabilities to frame conversations around eco-anxiety and enabling pupils to develop a range of skills to manage their anxieties linked to the climate crisis. It was clear that the pupils at West Lodge are supported through the cross section of work being facilitated to develop their ‘eco-capabilities.

Another area of note was the personal action West Loge pupils have enacted, with the support of their teachers and sustainability led. They have planted over 1000 trees worldwide, enabling the concept of Global Change through Local Action. The pupils talked about the ‘West Lodge Forest’ that exists around the world! This was a powerful and measurable way of creating change across the world.

The pupils discussed a You Tuber/ influencer Mr Beast, who has supported many endeavours such as the tree planting. Currently pupils are working through the best way to support the work around Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14: Life Below Water. This came up in comments during the assemblies and I will build on this later through my discussions that I had with the School Council and the school’s approach to sustainability education through the SDGs.

Sustainable Development Goals

The school is unique in how it has adopted the United Nations (UNs) SDGs(UN;, 2015). Each year group has responsibility for one SDG. This enables good conversations about sustainability education and the notion of immersion in enacting the ideas of being a global citizen. Seven out of the seventeen SDGs have been chosen to build knowledge and understanding of this key framework for global citizenship. The SDGs chosen for each year group are shown in the table below:

Reception	Responsible consumption and production
Y1	Life on land
Y2	Life below water
Y3	Climate action
Y4	Good health and wellbeing
Y5	Peace, justice and strong institutions
Y6	Inequality including gender equality

The idea is that each year group develops part of their curriculum output, linked to the SDGs. This enables teachers to have a structure in developing authentic and meaningful climate and sustainability education and it supports the long-term vision of the school in enabling all pupils to become responsible global citizens.

Throughout the day, the SDG work being accomplished across the school was showcased. One excellent example I came across was a Year 1 class writing a persuasive piece for conserving water and being responsible users of water as a resource for the reception pupils. It was brilliant to see the level of insight the Year 1 pupils had. This clearly was scaffolded and developed through the teaching input to have such inspiring output. The authenticity of this approach was linking up classes to develop the delivery of sustainability work across the school community. Therefore, it really speaks to a systems approach(AHE, 2021). Pupils must be exposed to looking at systems as interconnected and supporting them from a young age.

In addition to the embedding sustainability within the curriculum, pupils were introduced to the sustainability passports on the day of my visit. These passports have ‘I can’ statements. Each pupil at West Lodge is encouraged to use the passport to build further awareness of how their personal actions can inform local and global change. This passport will be developed not just for school activities but more importantly across all aspects of the pupils’ lives. They were encouraged to engage with this through all aspects of their lives. This is where West Lodge really thrive in having a strong school community. Their parents support the work being done in schools, hence having a wider impact on the school community.

Green Schools Project

I met with a group of year 4 pupils who are currently working through the content set out by ‘The Green School Project’. This Green School project is a grant funded programme aiming to adequately equip schools in tackling the climate crisis. Their programme focuses on four core areas: travel, energy, food and purchasing. Pupils work on all four areas to understand what the carbon emissions are for each area. They then work with the school community to reduce these emissions. The programme therefore supports pupils in developing a wide range of competencies and capabilities to become carbon literate and therefore support their knowledge and understanding in the area.

From my meeting with the year 4 pupils, who have been involved in the project, I was impressed with the meta language they were using in explaining and discussing their learning. They gave an example of a sandwich and the total tonnes of carbon emissions from producing one sandwich. The Green School Project uses a systems approach to build a connected insight into the carbon emissions and how to tackle the climate crisis in a holistic way. Overall, this programme has really enabled the pupils to think deeply about the emissions on a local basis and what they can do to reduce these. The school has placed this project in Year 4, to ensure that all pupils moving through the school get this input. Therefore, I would recommend that The Green School’s Project is an excellent example of good practice that could be used by all schools to develop this deep level of understanding.

School Council

My school council meeting involved working on their action plan. The pupils were tasked with creating an action plan to tackle three core areas that the school could support: Marine, Litter and waste. This proved to be a good conversation in discussing their ideas. The pupils particularly asked for my insight in aspects they could add to action supporting ‘marine life’. I made a few suggestions, including raising money for marine charities who may be working on rewilding the seas or to pick litter from the oceans. I was struck, once again, by the deep level of conversation that I had with council on these matters. It was good to note the power of pupil leadership through school council being used effectively to develop the sustainability agenda at the school.

School Estate- An outstanding example of how all schools could achieve biodiversity

I had an opportunity to visit all areas of the schools’ estate to understand what has been put in place to increase biodiversity. The school has adopted the ‘no mow May’ campaign and it was visible the change in the lawned areas of the estate. The school has a woodland trail area, a much needed space of pupils to build environmental skills and to support with the curriculum delivery. This space is actively used as part of the schools’ Forest School programme. The school has a pond, once again, the use is linked in with their curriculum provision. The school uniquely has an active bee population with hives on the site. This is an excellent opportunity for pupils to learn about bee keeping and to build their understanding around biodiversity and the role bees play in this. A recent orchard has been planted, this serves as a tranquil space for pupils and staff to sit and reflect. Pupils use the space during their breaks and teachers also utilise the space during their outdoor learning opportunities. The school commissioned the building of a round house, this cob house was built using traditional, sustainable building techniques and feeds into the whole school ethos on sustainability. There are growing facilities where each year group has a raised bed for growing crops.

The way the estate is set out and how the outdoor space is used in the curricular delivery sets a clear example of how school estates can be rewilded (DFE, 2022) to support biodiversity and help pupils to engage in the skills to do this.

The success of the estate is possible through community involvement. The school has regularly invited community groups to make use of their estate; this was especially welcome during the pandemic. The community supports in planting and maintaining aspects of the estate. On the day of my visit, Sanne had received free plants from one of the parents and they were going to be planted, with support from the West Lodge community after school.

Leadership

The importance of strong and visible leadership in informing change came across very clearly during my visit. Both Jim (Headteacher) and Sanne (Sustainability leader) have been key advocates of this important work. With Jim’s strategic leadership in supporting Sanne to achieve the outcomes of the sustainability education plan. Sanne’s leadership in delivering the work is impressive and this model of good practice should be used to support schools who are starting on their journey to build sustainability into all aspects of their school deliverable outcomes.   

Conclusion and ways to develop a West Lodge approach to sustainability in your school

• Strong leadership with a clear vision in how sustainability education will be developed and delivered in a cohesive way
• Using the SDGs as a vehicle to build a sustainability curriculum
• Engaging with The Green School’s Project or a similar carbon literacy programme to get support in high quality carbon literacy training.
• Working with the whole school community to support pupils in building a range of skills to support living a sustainable life.
• Make good use of pupil voice structures in place at the school to drive sustainability education. E.g. engage with the school council to support the development of climate work.
• Using a pairing of classes approach- e.g. year 6 with year reception etc to build a sense of pupils sharing thinking and ideas around climate and sustainability education.
• Use the popular voice through youth action and You Tubers to build conversations around climate action. As a school, you would need to monitor this but it is an effective tool to engage young people.

 

AHE. (2021). Education for Sustainable Development Guidance. Retrieved from https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/education-sustainable-development-guidance

DFE. (2022). Sustainability and climate change strategy. London: Crown Publication Retrieved from https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/sustainability-and-climate-change-strategy/sustainability-and-climate-change-a-strategy-for-the-education-and-childrens-services-systems

UN;. (2015). United Nation Sustainable Development Goals. United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Retrieved from https://sdgs.un.org/goals

Walshe, N., Moula, Z., & Lee, E. (2022). Eco-Capabilities as a Pathway to Wellbeing and Sustainability. Sustainability, 14(6), 3582. Retrieved from https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/6/3582