This blog is one of a series that illustrate how climate change relates to policy areas covered by each subject committee.
This blog highlights some of the links between climate and the education estate and the role of universities and colleges that fall within the Committee’s remit. A parallel blog considers the links between climate change and the education curriculum, teacher learning and wellbeing of children.
This blog draws on responses to an invitation circulated around the Scottish Parliament Academic Network (SPAN) to help build our understanding of the links, and associated expertise, in this area.
Education estate
Scotland’s education estate is a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions associated with, for example, heating and cooling buildings and procurement of goods and services. Education Scotland suggests that schools alone are responsible for 15% of public sector greenhouse gas emissions and up to 50% of emissions from local authorities. Analysis by The Alliance for Sustainability Education Leadership in Education (EAUC) highlights that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for the Scottish college and university sector during 2021/22 were 722,701 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e).
The Scottish Government requirement that new buildings from April of this year must have zero emission heating systems, and that all publicly-owned buildings will meet zero emission heating requirements by 2038, has major implications for the education estate. In 2020 the Scottish Futures Trust developed a funding model designed to incentivise local authorities to opt for highly energy efficient new school buildings. In March 2024 Scotland’s first accredited passivehaus school opened. Passivehaus buildings are built to very high energy efficiency standards and require little additional energy to meet their heating or cooling needs. Work is also under way across Scotland’s local authorities to deliver programmes of work aimed at upgrading schools to achieve higher energy efficiency standards. Edinburgh City Council notes that their investment programme ‘places the Council at the forefront of deep energy retrofit and will act as a pathfinder and exemplar for future Council operational buildings.’
The LfS Target 2030 action plan included further commitments to help incorporate sustainability into educational settings with commitments that include considering procurement and policies relating, for example, to sourcing energy, catering, transport providers and maintenance contractors and practice.
The education sector is also exposed to several challenges as a result of Scotland’s changing climate. Focusing on the university estate EAUC identify some of the risks to university infrastructure and business provision. These risks include those associated with overheating buildings (including university student accommodation), flooding of buildings (with implications for teaching and infrastructure e.g. IT) and disruption for research projects and student/staff travel.
Teach for the Future Scotland, who describe themselves as a ‘student-volunteer led organisation, which empowers students to change the education system’ have called for educational buildings to be put at the front of the queue to be retrofitted to net-zero standards. The Commission for the Land-Based Learning Review, an advisory group established to provide advice to Scottish Ministers, made a number of recommendations related to the education estate. These include a call to support the delivery of more outdoor learning by assisting local authorities and colleges to review their estate to identify the potential to cut emissions and create ‘accessible nature spaces’.
In their inquiry report on college regionalisation the Education, Children and Young People Committee noted concerns at the scale of work required to ensure the college estate is ‘wind and water tight’. They suggested that the Scottish Government explores how resources can be made available to address these challenges and support colleges make progress towards net zero.
Considerations around Scotland’s education estate navigating the transition to net zero are set in the context of significant challenges to college and university finances, and pressures on capital budgets. Major challenges to infrastructure spend include those associated with inflationary pressures and the costs of remedying Reinformed Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (RAAC). Audit Scotland’s 2022 and 2023 reports on the college sector have identified a maintenance and lifecycle backlog. The 2023 report states that SFC set aside £4.7m in 2023-24 for urgent repairs and received bids totalling £20m.
Post school education and research
Last year’s review of post-school education highlighted the need to ensure the skills needed on the path to net zero are understood and given the required priority. Following the review, the Scottish Government’s Purpose and Principles framework identified the transition to net zero as an opportunity for post school education, skills and research. The SFC Strategic Plan 2022-2027 states that SFC will ’..ensure institutions respond effectively to the climate emergency, embedding climate action and the just transition to net zero in our forward strategies, accountability frameworks and investments; and expecting colleges and universities to use their expertise and activities to deliver a prosperous, low-carbon future.’
In December 2020, Skills Development Scotland launched the Climate Emergency Skills Action Plan 2020-2025. The plan set out 6 priority areas for action and notes that:
‘The scale and pace of change needed across all sectors will demand a significant realignment of our investment in education, training and work-based learning towards green jobs. Skills Development Scotland and the Scottish Funding Council, through their joint Skills Alignment Team, will ensure that our annual investment in skills through work-based learning, further and higher education and upskilling and reskilling is fully aligned behind our economic ambitions for a net-zero transition.’
The Scottish Government also provides strategic guidance to colleges and universities on an annual basis in the form of a Ministerial letter of guidance to SFC. The letter of guidance 2024-25 includes a reference to climate change:
‘I expect SFC to work with Skills Development Scotland and other delivery partners to play a full and collaborative role in supporting key Ministerial priorities including the National Strategy for Economic Transformation, Entrepreneurial Campus Blueprint, our Green Industrial Strategy and Scotland’s just transition to Net Zero.’
A UK report Skills and Net Zero for the Climate Change Committee (CCC) published in 2023 noted that ‘Although most universities have committed to reducing emissions from their estates and activities, few have fully embedded net zero into their learning provision.’
In relation to Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) the report refers to:
- weaknesses in how curriculum aligns with the skills and training needs for net zero,
- the importance of HEIs being able to access timely intelligence on current and future net zero skills needs across the economy; and
- the need for all teaching staff be provided with staff development focused on net zero.
The CCC report also note that further education colleges are ‘at the heart of UK skills provision for the transition to Net Zero at local and regional levels, as well as underpinning the skills and workforce needs of key economic sectors such as construction, energy and transport.’
The Skills and Net Zero report suggests that current levels of investment in further education in the UK are ‘out of step’ with supporting the scale and pace of transition to net zero required, and that this could create blockages in the availability of skilled workers required.
The Scottish Government is a significant source of public funding for university research in Scotland (via the Scottish Funding Council (SFC)). This funding includes support for research pooling to encourage collaborations between Scottish higher education institutions and for a network of innovation centres. These innovation centres support collaboration between universities, businesses and other stakeholders to support innovation in key areas. Several of these centres link particularly closely with climate change. As examples the Built Environment-Smarter Transformation’s vision is to ‘accelerate the built environment’s transition to zero carbon’. The Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre (IBioIC) focuses on supporting the development and use of plant-based and waste resources in place of fossil fuels to produce key materials.
Children and young people – participation and engagement on climate
In Scotland young people have participated in climate strikes to demand action on climate and Scotland’s Children and Young People’s Commissioner previously highlighted his support for their participation in a letter to Education Directors. In 2019 the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee invited 13 children to the Scottish Parliament to talk to Members about their experiences as climate strikers and the actions they thought that Scotland should be taking.
Save the Children refer to the climate crisis as a children’s crisis noting that many will ‘bear the brunt’ of the impact it will have. They have called for children to be recognised as ‘equal stakeholders and key agents of change in addressing the climate and environmental crisis, including by establishing child-friendly mechanisms and platforms to facilitate children’s formal engagement in climate policy making.’
Children’s Parliament, Scotland’s centre of excellence for children’s participation and engagement, has engaged in a variety of work on climate change. In 2020 and 2021 Children’s Parliament participated in a parallel process to Scotland’s Climate Assembly. Recommendations from the Children’s Parliament were presented as part of the Climate Assembly report and the Scottish Government responded to these in 2021. More recently Children’s Parliament has undertaken a programme of work on the Learning for Sustainability curriculum and called for a number of changes to be made to the programme.
The Scottish Youth Parliament (SYP) have also engaged in work on climate change. Recent relevant SYP work has focused on the circular economy and their manifesto includes a number of recommendations linked to climate.
Dr Dan Barlow, Knowledge Exchange Manager – Climate Change Scrutiny, SPICe