FEE – the Foundation for Environmental Education – is the international group that manages (amongst other things) the Eco-schools franchise, and which therefore, one way or another, determines and/or limits what national Eco-schools teams can do and achieve. This is what FEE says:
"Eco-Schools is a fundamental initiative which encourages young people to engage in their environment by allowing them the opportunity to actively protect it. It starts in the classroom where it expands to the school and eventually fosters change in the community at large. Through this programme, young people experience a sense of achievement at being able to have a say in the environmental management policies of their schools, ultimately steering them towards certification and the prestige which comes with being awarded a Green Flag. The Eco-Schools programme is an ideal way for schools to embark on a meaningful path towards improving the environment in both the school and the local community while at the same time having a life-long positive impact on the lives of young people, their families, school staff and local authorities."
I take the view that FEE needs to re-think the balance of activities within its Eco-schools programme. As I see it, from observations within the UK, learning does not yet have as much prominence as campus / environmental management within the programme, and the prime focus remains on this management, for example, lowering schools' eco / carbon footprints and reducing waste and energy use. The quoted text (above) illustrates that FEE encourages this. It seems to me that, because of this, children’s learning can happen in quite an incidental way, rather than being a carefully designed and prioritised outcome of a clear pedagogical process. For me, children’s learning should be seen as significantly more important than environmental outcomes. If these are both positive, then that’s ideal, but learning outcomes should be prioritised, as this is what schools are for. Anyway, schools produce only about 2% of our carbon emissions, but they have 100% of the students.
I understand from contacts within the UK that FEE may well have begun to move in this direction, and I have seen its (2014) environmental education principles which talk about engaging participants in the learning / teaching process, although they don’t mention outcomes. However, I think FEE may need to do more to guide national operators in how to prioritise children’s learning. One way to do this, would be to change the Green Flag application process, so that national operators (such as Keep Britain Tidy in England) have to ask eco-coordinators to exemplify the sustainability knowledge, skills, competencies and values that they have nurtured in their pupils through each Eco-school step, and hence through the school curriculum. Doing this over the next decade or two would build a global evidence base of the impacts that learning for sustainability programmes such as Eco-Schools are having. Whilst this might be difficult to implement, the impact of simply asking teachers to report on learning outcomes might well change the way they approach their co-ordination of an eco-committee’s activities which could make a huge difference in real terms, and potentially quite quickly. It was clear in the Eco-schools roadshow I attended recently that Keep Britain Tidy is increasingly trying to help teachers to understand how important it is to be mindful of the values being engendered and reinforced through their educational and environmental activities.
Finally, If I were being very critical, I’d probably ask FEE why, after 20 years, they don’t have a more robust evidence base to demonstrate the environmental and learning outcomes of the Eco-schools programme. The sector badly needs a better evidence base for EE generally, and FEE / Eco-schools is very well placed to gather it.
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