Climate action in education

Schools need to evidence real climate action reporting in 2026. Jamie Livingston, School Estates & Sustainability Mentor, iAM Compliant explains how

Energy inefficiency has become an educational tax. Schools spend more than half a billion pounds a year on energy, with costs now sitting only behind staffing as the biggest line in the budget. At the same time, the Department for Education’s (DfE) sustainability expectations are moving from gentle encouragement to clear direction. Every school must have a sustainability lead and a Climate Action Plan (CAP) and although formal mandatory reporting isn’t yet universal, the sector should expect far sharper scrutiny from this year onwards.

A combination of rising costs and expectations has created a pressure point that’s reshaping estates management in schools and trusts. The schools that act now, and can evidence that action, will be both better prepared for future reporting requirements and protect their core budgets at a time when every pound matters.

UK schools spend around £543 million a year on energy, and roughly £135 million of that is estimated to be wasted through avoidable inefficiency. For a typical secondary school, simple operational changes can release £21,500 annually, which is enough to fund a newly qualified teacher or maintain essential support staff. This is why ‘evidencing climate action’ needs to be understood in practical, operational terms.

Below are four areas where schools can simultaneously cut costs and produce the kind of data that governors, auditors and the DfE will soon expect to see.

BOILER FLOW TEMPERATURES

Many schools run boilers hotter than necessary but lowering flow temperatures by only 5-10°C can recover 10-15 per cent in gas efficiency. Logging these changes and comparing meter data provides clear evidence of improvement, as well as making classrooms more comfortable in winter.

For FM teams, this is a textbook, low-cost amendment that’s quick to implement, easy to reverse if needed and straightforward to evidence through trend data.

USE BUILDING MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS PROPERLY

Most schools have a BMS, but settings often drift over time. You’ll cut hours of wasted runtime by resetting start and stop times, widening heating-cooling deadbands and setting proper holiday shutdown modes. These too are measurable adjustments that create data trails for governors to see.

Exporting screenshots or logs from the BMS provides valuable documentation for internal and external reporting, which is something auditors increasingly look for across public sector estates.

RUN A BASELOAD AUDIT

Overnight or weekend energy use often reveals equipment left running unnecessarily. Checking servers and vending machines, and then correcting them, shows instant results in consumption data, which provides evidence for reporting.

A termly repeat of the same walk through also allows you to show a pattern of continuous improvement rather than one-off intervention, which is vital for long-term reporting frameworks.

ENGAGE STUDENTS IN MONITORING

Behavioural change, when made visible, works. Involving pupils in energy checks or classroom switch-off campaigns helps to create a culture where energy use becomes part of the school’s shared responsibility. The impact is measurable and easily reportable, giving the school a great story to include in CAP reports. This also reduces reliance on estates teams alone. Many schools find that community-driven monitoring identifies issues long before they show up in the data.

None of this requires capital expenditure, and none of it depends on installing new technology. The point here is a shift from reactive management to monitored, documented practice. That’s where many schools currently have a gap; the actions are happening, but the evidence is not.

IMPROVE REPORTING STRUCTURES

Establishing a simple internal reporting rhythm closes that gap. These can include a termly sustainability update for the resources committee, a short energy section in Senior Leadership Team (SLT) papers, and a CAP progress tracker that logs completed actions and supporting evidence. Together, these create the paper trail schools need to show that everyday improvements add up to real, strategic progress.

This structured reporting approach mirrors broader FM governance requirements, particularly around statutory compliance, asset lifecycle planning and risk management. Framing sustainability data within these existing processes makes it easier for estates teams to integrate climate action into their routine workload rather than treating it as an additional demand.

Digital tools help here, not by replacing expertise but by reducing the administrative load. Systems that convert meter readings into carbon figures, track CAP actions and store evidence (photos, checklists, invoices, BMS logs) give schools the audit trail they need without piling more work onto already stretched teams. These tools also help standardise reporting across multi-site estates, bringing school portfolios in line with the kind of portfolio-level reporting already expected in corporate FM.

The message for the sector then is that schools do not need to wait to start proving progress. The data needed for tomorrow’s compliance can be made today through small, sensible, financially driven actions. In a year when budgets will continue to feel the squeeze, evidencing real climate action will protect scarce resources now and leave schools far better prepared for reporting requirements in 2026.

Training, documentation and collaboration between estates, maintenance, and leadership teams are key. When water safety is treated as a shared responsibility rather than a niche compliance issue, schools and public facilities are far better equipped to prevent problems before they occur.