We intended to achieve the following objectives: -analyse and identify the key areas needed for a school to turn into a “Sustainable school”; -prepare the schools to embrace the role of “Sustainability Manager” at governance and educational level; -raise awareness among headmasters on the importance of building a sustainability strategy involving the entire school; - prepare the entire school staff community on key topics regarding Sustainability, environment and climate change; -involve the entire school in the sustainable transformation process, from the governance to the school education staff and all relevant stakeholders; -increase awareness of teachers and students over Sustainability issues; -develop skills and knowledge of students and motivate them to embrace sustainable approaches, at school and at home; -let schools monitoring and tracking the afoot changes; -promote a “whole-approach” at school level, reinforce their capacity building and turn schools into a key drive for change, providing them with structured strategies to make in place.
Our project was based on the fact that schools must act as a community in order to be an effective Sustainability player. The idea was based on international research, especially from Australia and the US, promoting the so-called “Whole-school approaches to sustainability”. Such studies were the first to define school sustainability at an organizational level, and set a foundation to the necessity of making schools laboratories for sustainability. Interestigly, few months later the project’s approval, the EU Commission endorsed the whole-school approach. Partners believed that EU schools should act in this direction too, and carried out a preliminary research among 75 high schools to ask how they could be supported in this transformation. The key points were: 94% of schools said that they lack coordination and there is no real school policy in place regarding sustainability at school; the same percentage stated that many green actions are carried out as class-based projects, but that such projects do not follow explicit guidelines; teachers were not prepared enough over the environment and sustainable approach. As for the students, teachers stated that they were highly motivated to be involved in Sustainable education.