Intended End User: School Leader
Age Group: Lower Primary; Upper Primary; Lower Secondary; Upper Secondary
Themes and Topics: Collective Action; School Leadership
Duration: Ongoing
Type of Resource: Guidelines & Notes
Keywords: Quality Standards, Green Schools, School Governance, School Facilities, School Operation, Community Engagement
Languages: English, French
Description
The Green Schools Quality Standard publication provides for the first time ever a quality standard for greening schools and other learning environments. It outlines four core areas for integrating sustainability principles and climate action: 1) school governance, 2) facilities and operation, 3) teaching and learning, and 4) community engagement.
A ‘Green School’ is a learning institution that takes a Whole School approach to Education for Sustainable Development. The must have a particular emphasis on climate change as a thematic entry point to reflect on how schools become climate-ready. They must be safe and resilient places of learning as well as innovative hubs where learners and local communities can be equipped with the knowledge, skills, values and attitudes needed to address the impacts of climate change through the adoption of sustainable practices. They serve as agents of social change, fostering global citizenship, encouraging community action and incorporating ESD into the curriculum to create a sustainable culture.
Under each of the four dimensions of the Standard, concrete steps are offered and arranged according to the resources needed enabling educational institutions to customize their strategy to fit their capacities and contexts. Within each dimension, schools must achieve at least one-third of the suggested activities and one essential action which is deemed as pivotal for being a ‘Green School’.
How to use this resource
This resource provides a structured approach to developing a whole school approach to meeting quality standards for Green Schools. Concrete steps are provided for school leadership to take under relevant themed areas of attention.
The Green School Quality Standard requires school leadership teams to systematically review their own policies, procedures, practices and relationships to identify opportunities to green their school under the themes of School Governance, Facilities and Operation, Teaching and Learning and Community Engagement. The associated action plans require school leadership teams to make concrete steps towards sustainable learning environments.
The Green School Quality Standards cannot be achieved by any one individual, but requires a collaborative approach to developing sustainable institutional practices and cultures. Each school must bring the quality standard criteria and action plans to their own context to synthesis and develop implementation plans to work on over an extended period with other school stakeholders.
The Green Schools Quality Standards includes sets of associated actions and criteria for school to achieved in order to be considered a Green School. This resource could be used to facilitate a (series of) workshop session(s) with school teams and relevant stakeholders to develop action plans to develop the school into a green learning environment.
The resources
Green School Quality Standard PDF:
Other resources and tools, can be found here:
Learning Outcomes
- Apply a range of suitable tools and frameworks to promote Sustainability Citizenship within their schools and communities.
- Examine their own national/regional curricula, educational policies, programmes and external stakeholders to identify opportunities to promote Sustainability Citizenship in their schools and communities.
- Collaboratively synthesise knowledge, tools and frameworks to create a vision for delivering a school environment that supports the development of Sustainability Citizenship in their community.
- Develop and apply assessment criteria to evaluate Sustainability Citizenship development in their school and community.
- Through workshop activities and communities of practice, build capacity as Sustainability Citizenship educators and leaders.
Green Competencies
- Embodying Sustainable Values: Valuing Sustainability; Supporting Fairness; Promoting Nature
- Embracing Complexity in Sustainability: Systems Thinking; Critical Thinking; Problem Framing
- Envisioning Sustainable Futures: Adaptability; Exploratory Thinking
- Acting for Sustainability: Collective Action; Individual Initiative
Creative Commons
The Green School Quality Standard is created by UNESCO and shared by Synapses under a CC-BY-SA licence that allows readers to share, copy, distribute, adapt and make commercial use of works as long as it is attributed back to the author and distributed under this or a similar licence.
SDGs
