Investigating sustainability leadership and climate action plans in education

Start date: 1 August 2026
End date: 31 July 2027
Funding: Sustainability Service at the University of Leeds, Climate Plan (Positive Impact Partners)
Partners and collaborators: Leeds Climate Commission, Leeds City Council, Global Learning Leeds, Leeds Learning Alliance, Climate Ambassadors, Climate Action Leeds, Lets Go Zero, Youth Work Unit, Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, Another Way, Climate Ed, and National Education Nature Park
Primary investigator: Dr Syafiq Mat Noor
Co-investigators: Dr Indira Banner, Dr Michael Inglis, Innocent Tasara, Catherine Bell
External co-investigators: Dr Nur Husna Abd Wahid

In England, all schools were expected to implement a climate action plan and nominate a sustainability lead by 2025, as part of the Department for Education’s Sustainability and Climate Change Strategy (see DfE, 2023). However, we know very little about how these plans are enacted in practice, how effective they are, or how they impact schools, and curricula.

In this project, contextualised in Leeds, we propose to review primary and secondary schools’ climate action plans to ascertain their content and coverage, and to survey c. 300 sustainability leads to explore their challenges and successes. Drawing on 15–30 schools from this group, we will then undertake case studies (involving schools, teachers, and children) across contrasting types of school settings, including community, voluntary controlled, and foundation (trust) schools.

Through document analysis (i.e. schools’ climate action plans), quantitative analysis (i.e. surveys of schools’ sustainability leads), and qualitative analysis (i.e. case studies of the implementation of climate action plans and the enactment of sustainability leadership), we will explore the comparative impacts of these plans. These will be assessed against the Royal Meteorological Society’s climate literacy framework (see RMetS, 2025).

Siobhan Maguire, Sustainability Project Officer

Gaynor Butterwick, Strategic Projects & Partnerships Officer

Project aims

This project aims to:

review primary and secondary schools’ climate action plans in Leeds to identify their content, coverage and alignment with the Department for Education’s Sustainability and Climate Change Strategy,
examine the practices of sustainability leads, exploring the challenges, successes, and enabling factors in developing and implementing climate action plans, and
investigate how climate action plans are enacted in practice, focusing on sustainability leadership and their impact on school climate and existing curricula.

Project website

https://leedsclimate.org.uk/climate-action-in-leeds-schools/