How Bishop Young Academy are prioritising climate action
We visited Bishop Young Academy back in April to see what the school, who have previously been awarded a ‘highly commended’ certificate for their climate education, were up to on Earth Day.
What is ‘Earth Day’?
Earth Day takes place every 22 April, with a different theme every year. It encourages us to think about the climate action we can take. The 2025 theme was ‘Our Planet Our Power’.
This Earth Day, we visited one school taking part and found out about how Earth Day is just one of many amazing things they are doing to take climate action and prioritise sustainability!
Earth Day at Bishop Young C of E Secondary
Despite it being the first day back after an Easter Holidays, Bishop Young had lots going on for Earth Day this year!
At Bishop Young, they aim to embed sustainability and climate education across all their lessons, rather than just leaving it to the Geography or Science teachers. So, during form time, young people discussed Earth Day and the impact it has, as well as the need for sustainability. One Year 9 pupil explained sustainability as:
Providing for the current generation without costing the future generations.
Bishop Young is an oracy school, meaning they encourage young people to explain their ideas verbally, which in turn supports their writing skills. In their English lessons that day, the spoken activity was a discussion all around ‘Should America get rid of paper straws?’, prompting students to unpick Donald Trump’s recent U-turn to re-allow plastic straws.
The school also ran a ‘clothes drop’ on the day where staff and pupils were encouraged to bring in an item of clothing that they no longer needed, so that it could be repurposed and redistributed where it could be used, avoiding waste.
The Eco Committee and Future Generations groups
The school has an Eco committee and Future Generations team made up of students from Years 7 to 10, with 16 members of the Eco Committee.
The groups sat down and spoke about Earth Day and what it means to their projects and initiatives. The teams are running projects into providing food and heating homes, focussing on sustainability and helping those less fortunate at the same time. They showed us their garden which they are hoping to achieve a nature grant for to allow them to encourage bio-diversity and grow their own food.
The school has also applied for a prototype of a functioning Wind Turbine a part of their Science, Geography and DT studies, to be able to understand the importance of renewable energy.
Sustainability and climate is seen across the curriculum and, in Business studies, children also take part annually in the Solutions for the Planet ‘Big Ideas day’ and competition, where a businesses connect with schools to support them to “develop creative solutions (or ‘Big Ideas’) to sustainability issues the young people themselves deeply care about.”
The Eco Committee have just recently re-launched and gained new membership, so we’re looking forward to seeing what else Bishop Young get up to in the near future!
