A Cumbrian charity is to help create a national climate training toolkit for educators as part of a new government plan.
Cumbria Action for Sustainability will be one of the partners developing the toolkits as part of the Department for Education’s Climate and Sustainability Strategy.
As part of the strategy every maintained nursery, school, college and university in the country is to have a sustainability lead among their staff, all of whom will have ‘carbon literacy’ training on the climate crisis and how to respond.
These staff will then be able to lead on creating climate plans for their schools. They will also support their colleagues to contribute to the plans by giving them carbon literacy training using the new toolkits that Cumbria Action for Sustainability is helping to develop, led by the Manchester-based Carbon Literacy Project.
CAfS has been delivering accredited Climate and Carbon Literacy training in Cumbria since 2019 and is now running a pilot with local colleges to tailor the course to the education sector, supported by the National Lottery through the Zero Carbon Cumbria programme.
Hazel Graham, carbon literacy training manager at CAfS, said: “This announcement by the Department for Education is fantastic news.
“We have some fantastic examples already of schools leading on emission reduction in Cumbria. This announcement means all schools and colleges will gain the extra knowledge and support they need to reduce their own carbon footprint and also to inspire and involve their students. We’ve trained hundreds of people in organisations and communities around the county, and we’ve seen first-hand the impact that carbon literacy training can have.
“Our course is designed to do more than just build knowledge. Delegates tell us that they feel more able to then go on to share that knowledge with others, more confident to communicate about the climate crisis and more motivated to act. We get regular feedback about the significant, meaningful, lasting changes that individuals, communities or organisations have made, after attending our courses.
“We haven’t seen the detail yet of when the DfE roll out will be but there’s no need to wait. Any school or college that wants to be at the forefront of this exciting initiative can get in touch with CAfS now, as we can arrange carbon literacy training for you.”
CAfS also runs carbon literacy courses that are open to the public. Forthcoming courses are listed at cafs.org.uk/events. More information is also available by emailing carbonliteracy@cafs.org.u
