Green Schools Revolution (GSR) is a three year project launched in January 2023, funded by the #iwill Fund and other key match partners. It is centred on creating high-quality, meaningful opportunities for secondary school pupils to green their schools by taking the lead in implementing three key parts of the Department for Education's (DfE) Climate Change and Sustainability Strategy:

1. Developing Climate Action Plans;

2. Developing a Wilding Plan to wild 30% of the school's grounds by 2030;

3. Delivering Teach the Teacher sessions to help integrate climate education into subjects

We are actively recruiting new secondary schools to take part in our free, youth-led CPD programme Teach the Teacher. Visit the Teach the Teacher website to find out more and to register your interest to take part!

GSR focuses on less advantaged communities in target areas across England, including East Anglia, the South coast, the North East, North West and South West.

We will ensure that the young people involved in GSR will develop both confidence and competence, and we help them to progress along a social action pathway designed to support the development of civic, education, employment and socio-emotional outcomes.

A fourth strand, the Future Forum, brings young people together with the CEOs of the UK’s main environment and sustainability charities. This is an exciting new opportunity for youth voice to be front and centre in the environmental movement.

The #iwill Fund is made possible thanks to £66 million joint investment from The National Lottery Community Fund and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport(DCMS) to support young people to access high quality social action opportunities.

Our Teach the Teacher initiative has been supporting young people to talk to their teachers about climate change and show their demand for climate education.

Teach the Teacher not only upskills secondary school students and starts them on their environmental journey, but it also supports teachers to make simple changes to their teaching to help them integrate climate into the curriculum. It is completely free for schools to take part in, and requires very limited teacher support or time - we do all the hard work for you!

With additional funding from the Ovo Foundation, we intend to run TTT at 200 schools per year over the next 3 years, involving more than 900 young people per year. We have also branched out to running TTT for PGCE students at universities across the UK, hosting webinars with the UK Schools Sustainability Network (UKSSN), and leading sessions at education conferences.

Visit the Teach the Teacher website to find out more and to register your interest to take part!

The2022 DfE Climate Change and Sustainability Strategy has advised that all schools in England will need to have a Climate Action Plan (CAP) in place from 2025, but has not provided specific guidance or templates to assist schools in their creation. We have established a youth-led approach to CAP creation, developing a set of good practice examples and a bank of resources to help schools to create and implement impactful CAPs through youth social action. We hope that this will serve as a best practice example for CAP roll-out across the country.

To do this we work closely with schools, facilitating teams of pupils to lead the development of a CAP for their school. Pupils leading on their CAP work alongside a professional energy auditor to complete an energy audit of their school, receive support from The Wildlife Trusts to build nature and biodiversity into their CAPs and have the opportunity to have a real-life climate scientist visit their school.

In our first year, we have worked with 12 secondary schools within less advantaged coastal communities in our target areas of: Newcastle upon Tyne, Liverpool, Great Yarmouth, Weston-super-Mare, Plymouth and Southampton. As we move into our second year of implementation, we are recruiting a further 12 schools, with our original pathfinder group serving as best practice models.

If you'd like to take part in our CAPs programme, register your interest here.

UK Government policy is to protect 30% of the land and sea for nature by 2030. The DfE Climate Change and Sustainability Strategy (CCS strategy) calls on schools to work together to bring nature back into school grounds. Taking part in Wilding Schools helps contribute to a school’s participation in the National Education Nature Park, a separate Department for Education-commissioned project run by a partnership led by the National History Museum.

Like our work on CAPs, our project is a forerunner for wilding efforts across the sector. Working with 12 secondary schools, we support a team of pupils to lead on the development of a plan to wild 30% of their schoolgrounds by 2030, as well as assessing and reducing the negative impact on nature created by their school’s activities.

These young people have access to biodiversity mapping tools and access to expertise from partner organisations. They are supported to complete a baseline survey of biodiversity, identify target animal groups for wilding in their area, and implement their own wilding plan. Once the Wilding Schools plans and commitments have been written and agreed, we will work with our partners to showcase them, so other schools can replicate and develop their own wilding plans as a central part of their CAPs.

We are currently not accepting any more schools onto this programme.

Our fourth strand, the Future Forum, has also recently had its first sitting, with 18 amazing young people meeting to facilitate collaboration on youth priorities within the environmental movement.

The idea for the forum came from two of SOS-UK's youth representatives who are now the acting chairs of the forum, Jodie Bailey-Ho and Jamie Burrell. It was their ambition that the Future Forum would bring youth representatives from every leading climate and wildlife charity in the UK together to discuss how the sector can better engage and empower young people.

Charities who join the initiative nominate two young people from their youth boards in England to sit on the Forum. We also have places for young people from other parts of GSR, so we can elevate their voices. The Forum convenes, supports and mentors the young people, helping them organise themselves into formidable project groups, ensuring they are fully prepared for the meetings with the CEOs. The Forum will also offer a level of informal scrutiny and advice on the activities delivered in our other workstreams.

The forum is accepting new members - if you are a charity youth representative or staff member and would like to find out more, emailfutureforum@sos-uk.org

For more information on Teach the Teacher, please visit our website or email Jack Di Francesco.

For Climate Action Plans (CAP), please email our CAP team or register your interest here.‍

For Wilding Schools, please email Jo Wilkinson.

For Future Forum, please email Michelle Hemmingfield.