A new training programme is being offered to teachers in the UK to help schools respond to the climate and ecological crisis.

The training has been developed in response to calls by groups such as Youth Strike 4 Climate and Extinction Rebellion Youth to treat the crisis as an educational priority.

The training is being offered by the Green Schools Project, which was set up to empower young people and teachers to lead more sustainable lives. The programme will be piloted in a handful of schools in London before being made more widely available in other parts of the country.

Teachers taking part will be given tools to embed environmental issues into the curriculum and given opportunities to improve their connection to nature and their own health and wellbeing.

The announcement follows a recent survey which found that more than two thirds of UK teachers believe there should be more teaching about climate change in schools.

The Green Schools Project is the brainchild of Henry Greenwood, a former maths teacher from London.

Greenwood said:

Environmental education has been squeezed out to the point of being non-existent in many schools in the past decade, but it should be in all areas of the curriculum.

Young people have shown through the climate strikes that there is no issue of greater importance to them. They are rightly demanding to learn more about the climate crisis and to be given opportunities to actively play a part in the protection of the natural world upon which their future depends.

St John’s Highbury Vale Primary School in Islington is the first to be running the programme with their staff starting in September.

Deputy Headteacher Lindsey Hodgson said:

We feel as educators, the programme will support us to give the children the information they need to go out and become advocates of change for the future.

Image by Terry Matthews