Building a Sustainable Future with the University of Reading

Students from Year 8 through to the Lower Sixth joined the University of Reading on Wednesday 29^th March for the Climate Change Action Planning Workshop organised for three primary and four secondary schools in the local area. Each senior school had teams of representatives which included staff and pupils working together to tackle the climate emergency and the primary schools were represented by staff teams only. The University of Reading is a global leader at the forefront of climate change research and action planning and our students are fortunate to benefit from our physical proximity and our close working partnership with them.

Leighton Park sent three distinct groups of students to the event, the working party, the student support group and the media team. The working party looked at five different topics: decarbonisation, education, green jobs, biodiversity and adaptation for the future. There was a significant amount of discussion with expert input, which solidified into actions, the creation of a timeline with prioritisation of steps, and finally a presentation of ideas to the other attendees in a large auditorium. The day ended with offers of support  from the University and from Leighton park particularly for access to their community networks and facilities.

Sustainability Lead and Geography teacher, Oliver Staines, explained, “The focus of the day was coming up with our own climate change action plan with the University of Reading providing experts to ask probing questions which was great to push ideas forwards. We left with loads of ideas on how to move the School forward and to change the culture throughout the School. I think the students who went got a lot out of it; they were thoughtful, creative and sparky students who really got into it during the day.”

The Student Support group attended with the intention of supporting the primary schools with their work and also “keeping people in the workshop entertained during lunch and engaging them with a sustainability game, called, ‘How Bad are Bananas?’.” explained Delya (Lower Sixth). “We also collaborated with primary school officials and helped them form some plans to introduce sustainability to young children. In the end, we attended the afternoon session talk summarising the ways in which schools can introduce a more sustainable environment. Later in June, we are going to visit primary schools to introduce sustainability to children. Overall, the workshop was really informative.” Jocelyn and Hannah (Lower Sixth) added, “‘How bad are bananas?’ works by holding up two cards from the set, the participants then have to take an educated guess as to which item on the card will produce more carbon emissions. e.g. a vegetarian takeaway or a 1l carton of orange juice. Then the cards are flipped over to reveal the number of emissions they produce. This worked well to start discussions on how everyday things we do contribute to climate change.

The Media Team aimed to capture the experience of the event as a follow up to their initial documentary, Climate of Change, which shared the LP experience of attendees at COP26. Livi (Year 10) shared more detail: “I was involved in the filming and interviewing of climate experts to make our very own LP documentary about the University’s event for the second instalment of our documentary series. The first film was a rallying call; this second film is the action actually happening. We met and interviewed experts from the climate science industry, and each of them was so passionate; they each had something unique to say. Today was so inspiring because building our own action plan with other schools and people from the LP community really helped me feel like a change-maker.”

Fellow Media Team member, Millie (Lower Sixth), enthused, “It was amazing – it was brilliant to be able to make connections with and interview experts but the most value parts of the day were definitely the network created and the firm commitments to making change!”

Mark Budge, STEAM Co-ordinator, who organised the event with the University, reflected, “It was great to hear what the students thought and fantastic to see how LP pupils interacted with all the adults with the “How Bar are your Bananas”, doing the interviews and meeting people. That is what climate change action is all about: involving the students.”

Jo Toovey, Eco-Club Co-Leader, commented, “Leighton Park are forming a climate change collaborative hub for the schools involved, and will be expanding it out to other schools in the near future. This was introduced at the event. We will also be including all of the fabulous experts who joined us on the day (including people from the DoE, IoE of UoR, The MET Office, Meteorology and Sustainability teams from UoR, Design Nature, Natural History Museum, etc). Leighton Park are acting as the networking lead on this, headed up by myself and Mark. We are sending students out to the three primary schools during the Summer term to help support them with them plans, and share some of our own examples of how to implement sustainable actions in school, whilst enthusing primary school students. We are offering similar support and collaboration with the secondary school teams too. It was great to get some many likeminded and passionate people together in one place. Student views are so important in the process of acting on climate change, and it was a privilege to be able to facilitate the coming together of everyone to explore these. I look forward to further collaborations between the groups present today in the very near future.”