Greening every school
Vision: From early childhood through adult education, work to ensure that all schools achieve green school accreditation, including teacher training and higher education institutions.
Goal: All countries will have adopted a green school accreditation scheme with at least 50% schools, colleges, and universities with green accreditation and are operating sustainably.
A “green school” is defined as a learning institution that takes a whole-of-institution approach to Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), in particular by addressing climate change through its teaching, facilities and operations, school governance and community partnerships. Green schools aim to promote knowledge and skills for the social, economic, cultural, and environmental aspects of sustainable development.
As part of UNESCO’s contribution to the Greening Education Partnership, a collaborative process has been undertaken to develop the Green school quality standard with the goal of transforming at least 50% of schools in each country into green schools by 2030.
Green school quality standard
The Green school quality standard aims to harmonize accreditation criteria for schools committed to sustainability through a whole institution approach to ESD. It targets accreditation scheme organizers, including civil society-led networks, international associations and governments, providing recognition for schools' ESD actions, particularly in climate change education. The standard also aims to support education authorities and policymakers. To meet the standard, accreditation schemes must incorporate at least one-third of suggested activities in governance, facilities, teaching, and community engagement.
Key steps to use the standard
Deciding to become a Green School is not an end in itself, but only the beginning of a process to anchor sustainability values in all dimensions of the school life. If successful, the process transforms not just buildings but lives of people, empowered by the skills and values developed that are internalized by the various actors. The process to align to the standard are outlined below for accreditation schemes, governments and schools.
There are different pathways to align to the standard:
- Review their programme’s criteria against the standard.
- Meet the minimum threshold of alignment by covering 1/3 of the actions recommended under each of the four dimensions including the four essential actions.
- Fill in the dedicated template below to show that your accreditation scheme is aligned with the standard and send it to the Greening Education Partnership secretariat at UNESCO (gep@unesco.org) to be published online.
- Continue to support schools to become green climate-ready schools based on the standard and their specific needs and contexts.
- Collaborate with the Greening Education Partnership to monitor the progress of schools within the network and contribute to achieving the global target of getting 50% of schools in each country green by 2030.
- Support at least half of the country’s schools to become green climate-ready schools using the standard. To do so, governments may wish to pursue either or both of the following two avenues:
- collaborate with existing accreditation schemes that are aligned with the standard which are present in their country/region; and/or
- develop a government-led scheme that accredits Green Schools in alignment with the standard. In this case, the authority in charge is invited to fill in the dedicated “Expression of alignment” template below to show that the accreditation scheme is aligned with the standard and send it to the Greening Education Partnership secretariat at UNESCO (gep@unesco.org) to be published online.
- Collaborate with the Greening Education Partnership to monitor the progress of schools within the network and contribute to getting 50% of schools in each country green by 2030.
- Consider joining a school accreditation scheme present in the country/region that is aligned with the standard.
- Follow a whole-institution approach to ESD in your journey to becoming a green climate-ready school.
Please find more details on page 56-61 of the standard.
Key dates
- June 2024
Release of publication - COP29
Release of the first list of accreditation schemes aligned with the green school quality standard and the number of green schools globally - COP30
Annual release of the updated list of accreditation schemes aligned with the green school quality standard and the number of green schools globally - By COP35 (2030)
50% of schools and learning institutions in each country are greened
New global tool on sustainable school buildings
One of the GEP members, the Emirates Green Building Council, is developing a new Sustainable School Building Guidance booklet (tentative title). This new tool, which compliments the Green School Quality Standard, aims to provide a technical, approach on how to build, retrofit, maintain and operate a school building to make it more climate-ready and sustainable which can be used in different countries and contexts. The guidance is divided into four sections: new sustainable school buildings and infrastructure, existing school buildings and infrastructure, school operations, and financing sustainable schools.
A draft of the tool was presented during the GEP Working Group meeting to coincide with COP29 in November 2024, and is available for global consultation until 6 January 2025. GEP members and non-members are welcome to provide feedback and share promising practices in relation to this new guide.
Contact
For more information, please contact gep@unesco.org
