The aim of our project was to support All-day schools in developing a curriculum as well as day-to-day practices, which foster sustainability education and make an impact toward climate stability. Thus, a major priority is that pupils are learning about sustainability in order to become active citizens, who are conscious about the environment and our climate and act accordingly. In order to reach this goal, key competences have to be acquired by teachers and pupils alike. Additionally value education, civic engagement and participation lie at the core of sustainability and environmental education and thus were vital ingredients to this project. The project endorsed the whole-school approach, integrating ESD / transformative education in a holistic manner. The project aimed at learning from existing good-practice examples. Based on these examples, which were researched through case studies, the project aimed at fostering (all-day) schools' transformation towards sustainability education and everyday practices by developing in-service training modules for schools wishing to adapt their programme towards ESD and transformative learning and to change their school policy in accordance with the whole-institution approach.
In an era, which is characterised by a climate crisis, rapid loss of biodiversity, depletion of natural resources and continuation of global inequalities, it is pertinent to empower especially young people not only to change their thinking but also to change their actions in a sustainable way. While there is relative global consent, that transformative learning is necessary for sustainable development, the path towards it is often less clear. In order to deal with all these challenges, we need schools and educators, that lead by example and try out new, innovative pedagogical approaches in their schools and are willing to make changes to school policy beyond its pedagogy, in alignment with a whole-school approach. In this respect, especially All-Day schools show a great potential as they also offer more extracurricular activities than half day schools, which is important in education for sustainable development (ESD) / transformative education. Furthermore, as children spend more time in this type of school social learning plays a more important role as well. Thus All-Day schools seem well suited to holistically incorporate ESD and transformative learning into their educational programme and to adapt their everyday practices.