COP 30 in November is an opportunity to kick-start your own school’s Climate Action Plan and empower your students to take action on climate and carbon reduction. Oci Stott, Climate Action Advisor, offers some ideas.
It starts conversations about climate
As acclaimed climate scientist, Professor Katharine Heyhoe says, one of the most important things we can do is to talk about climate change.
In her TED talk (2019), she highlighted on-going research from the Yale Programme on Climate Communication (see Leiserowitz et al, 2025) showing that two-thirds of Americans rarely or never talk about climate change, despite 70% agreeing that the climate is changing and that this will harm plants and animals and future generations. And if we don’t even talk about it, what hope have we of tackling it?
Discussing COP is an exciting opportunity to engage the whole school community about why taking action on climate is so important. This opportunity is something that is often missing in schools and something that young people really want.
As one student said after attending the Our Earth Our Future conference organised by The Mulberry School for Girls in 2024: “This is the first time I have really had the chance to talk about these issues (sustainability) in a school environment. I think headteachers should do more. Schools could do something really powerful if they took this seriously.”
While this conference wasn’t specifically focused on COP, it brought together environmental activists from a range of organisations (including Let’s Go Zero, Amnesty International, and Tower Hamlets Council) to speak about climate change and take part in workshops. Having attended the conference, most of the students (there were 265 in total) not only felt they had learnt more about sustainability but also felt more empowered to speak and act on sustainability issues.
It creates activism and increases understanding
Creating a mock COP-style event can be a brilliant way to inspire activism, enhance understanding and potentially combat cynicism. Birmingham City Council and the InterClimate Network did just this recently with brilliant results.
Young people were tasked with representing countries with competing agendas – such as The Marshall Islands, China and the USA – and had to try to come up with solutions on how to tackle the climate crisis.
It is very easy to get frustrated at the COP process and the lack of progress, but putting young people into the shoes of the countries they are representing can give them an understanding of why the whole process is so difficult. It gets them thinking about vested interests and how to negotiate change.
Ellie, a student who took part in a similar Mid-Suffolk District Council mock COP event, said: “I have learnt about how the climate can affect the whole world and how different countries have to do their part to help combat the problems that climate change has presented us.”
While exploring the challenges of the COP negotiations might sound like it would dampen down enthusiasm for action, it seems to have the opposite effect – students negotiate hard to get to solutions and, in the case of the Birmingham event, put together a list of actions that they planned to take in their schools (InterClimate Network, 2024).
A lever for talking to young people about careers
Thinking about green jobs offers a clear point of optimism. Analysis by the Confederation of British Industry has suggested that the green sector is growing at triple the rate of the UK economy and is providing high-wage jobs across the country while cutting climate-heating emissions and increasing energy security. It found that 22,000 net zero businesses employ almost a million people in full-time jobs (see Carrington, 2025).
There are a growing number of resources available to engage young people with the possibilities that green careers offer. The DfE’s Climate Ambassador programme can help to provide experts from a range of green careers to come into schools. Likewise, Let’s Go Zero can give lots of practical advice about how to embed green careers into what you teach (whether at primary or secondary).
COP can be the launchpad to create a school climate action plan
The Department for Education’s Sustainability leadership and climate action plan guidance (2023) wants all schools to have a climate action plan in place by the end of 2025. What better inspiration for students than their senior leaders making a plan for the school community in parallel with the leaders in COP updating their global action plan?
Having been a sustainability lead in schools myself in my time and having spoken to numerous others in schools across England in my role as a climate action advisor for Let’s Go Zero, one of the key challenges is that action on the environment is often left to a few passionate campaigners or small handfuls of young people which can get exhausting and dispiriting.
However, when young people see their senior leaders taking their concerns seriously and making real change – installing solar panels and heat pumps, monitoring and saving their energy, creating opportunities to access nature, embedding climate change across the curriculum – they will be empowered to make change themselves.
COP 30 is an opportunity for senior leaders to make action on climate change part of the fabric of the school and demonstrate to young people that they are leading the way in safeguarding the future of the planet.
Final thoughts
The competing priorities in schools make it difficult to focus on climate change – an issue that sometimes feels far removed from the day-to-day struggles of getting students through the door, safeguarding them from the numerous challenges that many of them face and supporting them to pass exams that may shape their life’s opportunities.
However, if the purpose of education in its broadest sense is to enable young people to thrive in the world, then caring for that world must be fundamental. As Ayana Elizabeth Johnson said: “Averting climate catastrophe, this is the work of our lifetimes – be tenacious on behalf of life on Earth.”
