Adrian Underhill is a consultant to schools and offers face to face teachers’ courses of 1 and 2 weeks at Oxford University, IH London and Bell Cambridge, as well as online. He has a series of videos at www.macmillanenglish.com/pronunciation-skills/ and blog at: adrianunderhill.com

Demonstration videos at www.macmillanenglish.com/pronunciation-skills/   and other on YouTube. Email: adrian@aunderhill.co.uk

 

The school scene

The leadership of most schools want to act on climate change and wider issues of sustainability. They know their business has leverage and can make a difference, and that their staff and school community will support the school championing eco values.

Schools that do this visibly will command attention and allegiance, grow their community, draw in parents, sponsors, kids, local networks, influence teaching materials, and gradually influence syllabuses and exams, and eventually even ministries (!). Such schools gain fans not just customers, and act as compelling thought leaders for others.

 

Green content for learners

Much progress has been made on classroom resources, lesson plans, teacher strategies and a green learner syllabus. There is lively discussion through media and publications. IATEFL has launched Green IATEFL and the September /October issue of Voices is packed with ideas for action and reflection. Yes teachers need to act, and they are. But what about the schools they work for? It is not enough to encourage greening the class, that should be a natural outcome of a wider greening across the school, organisation, or association.

 

Green content for the behavour of schools themselves?

Well, schools face a real problem here, which is where to start, how to self-measure, what can be improved and how, how to prioritise, how to benchmark against standards, how to compare with others, and how to make credible and audited claims through their school’s media that will turn heads, win hearts and promote reputational advantage. It is not enough to sit down and make lists of actions like paper saving, doing digital, cycling to work, recycling, power reduction etc, though these are part of it. Nor is it enough to for schools to rely on worthy environmental self-claims which are haphazard, unreliable and subjective, limited by your time constraints and blind spots. Just as schools cannot make serious claims to pedagogic excellence without an evidence based audit from an external inspection scheme, so too the claims of impact reduction have little credibility unless backed by a recognised external auditor. 

 

Carbon impact of study abroad

Most language organisations deal with learners in their local communities. Some especially in UK, Australia, NZ, USA etc. are Study Abroad institutions. The latter have the additional carbon impact of international travel, and since impact reduction of air travel is as yet unresolved, you have to keep that question boldly open, while forging ahead systematically and visibly on tracking and reducing impact across all the categories where you can make a difference, picking the low-hanging fruit immediately, and working toward the more challenging impacts as you develop the skills, momentum and a framework. 

And how do you do this?

 

The simple answer is…

Use one of the growing number of ready-made online frameworks designed for small organisations who want to act sustainably and to demonstrate that they are doing so.  These frameworks tell you what to measure, how to score yourself, how to make your improvements visible, and how to show the outside world your credible, benchmarked and objective scores. Using a ready made measuring system is simpler and more robust than trying to invent a system yourself.

 

In this article…

I introduce you to three such ready-made, online, sustainability auditing systems, in the hope of inspiring you to examine them and commit to working with one of them, or with something similar. I also reference two further schemes.

Two of these three ready-made frameworks are specifically for ELT schools, and one is for any small or medium sized enterprise. The first two are free to use and if later you want to join there is a cost. The third is designed for an international organisation of schools, and though only members have access to it I describe it here so you see how it works, and if you are part of a chain or association of schools you might consider developing your own membership auditing system. But make sure it is measurable, credible, audited, and above all made public so that you too exert thought leadership throughout the industry community.
 

Three audited school impact schemes

1. Green Standard Schools for ELT schools  https://greenstandardschools.org/

2. BCorp for any small enterprise including schools https://app.bimpactassessment.net/

3. Environmental Sustainability Review for members of the International House World Organisation. https://ihworld.com/about/environmental-sustainability/
 

Overview of the three impact audit schemes

1. Green Standard Schools  (GSS)  https://greenstandardschools.org/

Key features:  they include guidelines to help ELT schools become more environmentally sustainable. There are tools to measure the environmental impact of your school. Evaluation involves self-assessing but is accredited by an external panel. There is an option to join the GSS Association

 

Green Standard Schools have three aims:

1. To provide a set of policies and practices that schools can adopt and adhere to. You work through a self-assessment form consisting of 50x yes/no questions covering language school activities that have environmental impact such as energy and water consumption, purchasing, recycling, accommodation, food, travel, teaching, training, social activities etc. You provide evidence to verify your answers, and submit this for a free audit of your current policies and practices.

 

2. To award accreditation

Assessors award points for the answers given and for the evidence provided. and give feedback on questions answered, including suggestions on how schools can improve their performance. Schools gaining 130/200 points can become members of the GSS association. Those that don’t make it first time, which is quite natural, learn from the tailored feedback how to measure more accurately and credibly, and resubmit when ready.

 

3. To develop pedagogical resources

The third aim is to design and provide materials to encourage integration of environmental content in language teaching and learning. These materials consist of lesson plans, videos, reading and other study resources, all provided free on the GSS website https://app.greenstandardschools.org/public-lesson-plans

See the August 2024 issue of HLT for full description Green Standard Schools.

 

2  BCorp   https://app.bimpactassessment.net/

Key features: it measures social and environmental impact since they are connected. There is a comprehensive matrix of specific points to work on, and guidance on how to measure and how to self award points for measures (already) taken. Points are intended here as an objective measure of impact reduction, and can be used for comparison or to show progress.

The BCorp route map is about: assessing your impact, comparing, and improving.

Social and environmental impact is measured across these five interconnected impact areas, shown here (with an illustrative question).

Governance: e.g. What portion of your management job descriptions include evaluation on their performance with regard to corporate, social, and environmental targets?

Workers: e.g. What say do full-time workers have in the school’s company impact?

Community:  e.g. What % of management is from underrepresented populations? (plus diversity, equity, inclusion)

Environment: Does your company monitor and record its universal waste production?

Customers: How can customers verify that your school is improving its impact?

Procedure to access is: sign in to BCorp 🡪 Dashboard 🡪 and you’ll see the impact assessment page below, showing the five categories, the number of questions in each, and your current score

Choose those questions you are ready to work with. The question guides you as to how to measure. Your responses yield your baseline score against which to improve and see your progress, and to compare yourself and others. 

This reveals actions with zero cost attached, ie quick wins with immediate score improvement to be gained, actions that are doable but need budgeting, actions you’ll leave for the moment, and those which do not apply. So you quite quickly see the big picture of your impact, a baseline score which you can use internally or in promotion, and a plan,

When ready you can evaluate your performance compared to the thousands of other businesses that use B Impact Assessment platform to identify, track, and improve week by week.

Here is the graphic for the BCorp personal impact assessment dashboard, showing the five categories, the number of questions in each, and your current score.

 

3. Environmental Sustainability Review  https://ihworld.com/about/environmental-sustainability/

Key features: it consists of twelve self-review criteria, six things to do more of, six to do less of (see below); You complete a guided self-review, and submit for assessment, followed by further exploration of actions taken.  The resulting audit is time dated, and schools would repeat every 2 years to show further action and commitment to continuous improvement.

The six things you need to do more of include: educating students, encouraging sustainable behaviour, increasing community involvement, setting a food supply policy, setting sustainability requirements for suppliers, and managing your sustainability strategy.

The six things you need to do less of: travel related and negative impacts, energy consumption, single use consumables, waste and re-cycle, water consumption, and environmental footprint of new premises.

Against each of these twelve criteria you state:

1 what actions you are taking and 

2 which of these four stages you are currently at with that action: 

- you intend to act, 

- you are currently acting, 

- you have committed to quantifiable actions and measures, 

- you have in place a total school strategy documenting measures and effectiveness.

Then you complete the online self-evaluation and submit. Staff at International House World Organisation assess the responses and then follow up with stakeholders in your school, developing evidence through interview/discussion, documents, photos, videos and so on. When all this is completed, a short video or blog highlighting points of excellence is made and used to champion the school’s achievements within the industry and as widely as possible.

Demonstrating significant action on 8 of the criteria gains you a badge to use on media and communications

 

Two further impact frameworks of particular interest

4. UNESCO https://www.unesco.org/en/education-sustainable-development/greening-future/schools

Green School Quality Standard covering School governance, Teaching and Learning, Facilities and Operation, Community engagement. Shows what a climate-ready green learning environment should offer. Useful thinking and planning tool. Particular focus is on the school community and engagement. If you want an audited impact rating you can refer to their list of accreditation schemes aligned with this standard, or find your own. Certainly, you could use this in conjunction with any of the three audit schemes above.

 

5. Eco Schools https://www.eco-schools.org.uk/

It has early years focus, is UK based, with activities and checklists for getting everyone involved. It has very useful starting ideas and action checklists. It includes a simple “Count Your Carbon” calculator. It is designed for nurseries, schools and colleges. It helps calculate, understand, reduce and track your carbon emissions. There is no external audit.

 

Compliance

Note that some items in these impact audits will overlap with legal compliance (maybe 15%?) – which may be worth prioritising as they are (becoming) legal requirements. 

 

Conclusion

Once you’ve looked at the five schemes listed here you will be better placed to discern between audit schemes, to see what help and guidance is available out there, what your own impact measurement needs are, and which scheme can best walk you through the steps, help you make visible your school impact, measure improvements and make upbeat credible claims to the world.

The schemes differ in the detail they go into, and the number of guiding steps they offer for measuring and for reducing impact, and the control you have over scoring points that will be meaningful to you, your staff and the community. That’s why I think its important to look at several audit schemes prior to launching out.

This is a journey not only for school leaders but for an entire school staff and its community. When the organisation itself takes ongoing conspicuous and measurable action on its own behaviour the entire staff can feel the encouragement of collective commitment across the piece, and a worthwhile venture takes on a life of its own, offering some counter balance to feelings of powerlessness.  Be sure to engage staff from the first moments in an inclusive strategy rather than presenting a ready made plan.

Ultimately you will have a school with good transparent governance, an engaged staff, a higher purpose that brings people together in a unified endeavour, and something to show the world.

In a nutshell: engage school and community, make a verifiable difference, tell the world… and be the change.
 

Please check the Pilgrims in Segovia Teacher Training courses 2025 at Pilgrims website.