Show Your Stripes! Students Take Climate Action

As part of Leighton Park’s continuing work around Climate Change, the school was delighted to participate in two important events during this year’s Reading Climate Festival.

On Thursday 15th June, a group of students attended the Reading Concert Hall to partake in a debate empowering young people to tackle the greatest challenge of their generation.

Introduced by The Rt Hon Sir Alok Sharma, MP for Reading West and President of COP26, the debate discussed the latest progress in embedding climate understanding across the education system, in supporting those anxious about the future, and ensuring future generations have the skills and knowledge to thrive in a green economy.

“Welcoming a panel of leading representatives from the education sector, NGOs and youth activists, it was a positive and inspiring debate!” reflected Oliver Staines, Sustainability Lead and Head of Geography.

Show Your Stripes Day is an annual campaign led by the University of Reading, to inspire conversation about our warming climate and the urgency by which we must act to avoid its worst impacts.

On Wednesday 21st June, students across Year 7 to Lower Sixth were invited to contribute to the heart of the University’s activity, in a Youth Climate Summit held at Reading Football Club’s iconic stadium.

To kick off proceedings, students carried out a stripes enactment to raise awareness of the campaign. Following this, local organisation, Design Nature, delivered a workshop focused on the discussion, design and development of climate actions that students would like to see in their schools. Lilia in the Lower Sixth, remarked “Today was very insightful and engaging. I also liked the aspect of collaboration between schools.”

STEAM Co-Ordinator, Mark Budge, commented “The focus for our students was identifying three or four elements from the excellent work undertaken at the Climate Action Planning Workshop in March to plan a campaign to be delivered next academic year. The events have empowered students in the challenge of tackling climate change.”

Present at the Youth Climate Summit were a number of inspirational enterprises including Let’s Go Zero, Running Out of Time and Earth Cubs.

Earlier in the month, Oliver and Jo Toovey, Sustainability Co-Lead, joined the University as secondary school representatives at the Institute of Education, based on their London Road Campus.

Alongside various faculties and education charity, SOS UK (Students Organising for Sustainability), Oliver and Jo discussed how to deliver a sustainability curriculum that is interdisciplinary, cross curricular and takes students opinions into consideration.

SOS UK works with students to empower them to advocate for the changes they want to see in the curriculum and effect change.

Oliver commented, “The University of Reading are bringing stakeholders together to share best practice. The ideas that were discussed are very much what we do at Leighton Park, so it was nice to see everyone taking the same approach. No individual can change a curriculum on their own.”