Strategic plan aims, objectives and targets
The SDE survey reported that sustainable development education was specifically referenced in the strategic plans of 91% of participating colleges, in the mission statements of 9% of colleges and in the learning and teaching strategies of 27% of colleges. These findings summarise very well the position in the colleges visited by inspectors. Almost all have embedded sustainability within their strategic plan aims and objectives. A few colleges have promoted sustainability for many years and these issues underpin the ethos of the colleges. For example, Elmwood College has a long-standing commitment to sustainability and its 2008 annual environment report is the 13th it has produced and demonstrates this commitment clearly. In the few colleges where sustainability did not feature in key strategic aims and themes, there was reference to sustainability within the estates sections of the strategic plan.
Most colleges addressed sustainability in a balanced way in their strategic plans, both considering the impact of the college on the environment and highlighting the duty to promote sustainability within the learning experience.
Aberdeen College devotes one entire section of its strategic plan to environmental sustainability. The plan makes reference to the Scottish Government’s initiatives for a ‘Greener Scotland’. It acknowledges that the college has a responsibility to promote and develop environmental sustainability and that its activities will have an impact on the environment. The plan refers to its ‘dual role’ in relation to sustainability through ‘reducing its own impact on the environment by reducing its emissions and waste as well as ensuring that learners have the knowledge, skills and attitudes ... to contribute effectively to an environmentally sustainable future.’ In the strategic objective concerning the development of its estate, it defines a number of key actions relating to sustainability. These include to measure the carbon footprint, reduce its CO2 emissions and investigate opportunities for carbon offsetting.
The extent to which colleges have addressed sustainability is demonstrated in their support for the University and Colleges Climate Commitment for Scotland (UCCCfS) 13. This represents a public commitment from colleges and universities to allocate time and resources to implementing measures that will reduced their greenhouse gas emissions and carbon footprints.
The Environmental Association of Universities and Colleges (EAUC) leads and promotes the UCCCfS framework and summarises the commitment as:
‘Signatories are committed to producing and publishing a five-year climate change action plan by February 2010. Plans will include measurable targets and timescales to achieve a significant reduction in emissions for all business operations and activities, including:
Signatories are expected to incorporate work on climate change into their established improvement processes and are required to publish annual results on progress detailing outcomes achieved and further actions required. This represents a significant commitment for colleges and one which requires careful consideration by signatories before entering into the agreement. As at April 2009, 26 of Scotland’s 43 colleges were signatories and the EAUC expects almost all colleges to have signed the agreement by the end of 2009.
Sustainable development policies and strategies
Most colleges visited had clear policies and strategies to address sustainability in key aspects of their operation. Most of these policies and strategies adopted a broad view of sustainability that addressed the three components of sustainability - environment, society, and economy.
Langside College’s environmental policy embraces all the themes of sustainability. The policy adopts a 4C approach to embedding environmental sustainability across the college recognising that the environmental sustainability agenda has significant implications for the curriculum, campus, community and culture of the college. The college strives to engage learners at all levels with sustainability concepts and issues. It aims to address sustainability criteria within programme approval, design, marketing and review processes. The college commits to campus practices that contribute to the achievement of cultural, economic, environmental and social sustainability. It aims to play a leading role in advancing sustainability in the south east of Glasgow and in sharing and disseminating its experience locally and nationally. It plans to integrate sustainability within all policies and strategies as these are developed or updated.
However, a few colleges’ policies and strategies focused on environmental issues in relation to estates and did not address curriculum issues.
Leadership of sustainability within colleges
The SDE survey explored the ways colleges had taken forward sustainable development education. It identified the role of a sustainability champion in each college as being integral to success in raising the awareness of SDE among staff and learners. Leadership for sustainability was good in all the colleges visited by inspectors. A senior manager usually had overall responsibility for sustainability, or this responsibility was shared by two senior managers, one having responsibility for curricular issues and the other for estates. In most colleges, committed and enthusiastic managers had championed sustainability, often working with a sustainable development group or advisory committee. They had informed the development of policies and strategies in sustainability, helped develop staff awareness of sustainability issues and ensured that college plans were implemented.
Ayr College has signalled the importance of sustainability through the appointment of a manager to champion initiatives in sustainability. The college has made good progress in furthering the sustainability agenda through the manager’s enthusiasm and commitment. Initiatives under her leadership have included the promotion of sustainability across the college through the creation of a cross-college group called ECO Warriors, which includes learners and both teaching and support staff. The group makes suggestions to the college of ways that it can become more sustainable through energy savings and through the promotion of special events such as a green travel day. (This initiative is short-listed for EAUC’s Green Gown awards 2009 which are open to all colleges and universities in the UK.) Staff across the college are aware of the significance of sustainability to the college, both in the way it operates as an organisation and in its recognition of the importance of embedding sustainability into the curriculum. The college has a comprehensive sustainability policy that addresses its commitments in environmental, economic and social aspects.
The importance of leadership of sustainability issues is highlighted in the Building Research Establishment’s functional performance review of John Wheatley College East End Campus14. Sustainable development characteristics are a key feature of the campus, which achieved a Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) excellent rating at the design stage (an explanation of the term BREEAM appears here).
‘The East End campus has clearly benefited from an informed, dedicated client who has worked closely with the design team and end users, to drive forward the sustainability agenda, from conception to design to construction and now to operation of the building, bringing together a number of exciting, innovative features and successfully linking these with highly efficient, low carbon energy systems. This has undoubtedly been a successful project and could be viewed as an example of good practice for other facilities looking to replicate similar projects.’
Staff awareness of sustainability
In all colleges visited, both teaching and support staff displayed a good awareness of sustainability issues and their significance to both the college and the wider community. Generally, they were aware of the Scottish Government’s Greener Scotland strategic objective and of the importance of sustainability to the lives of people living and working in Scotland. Most staff were committed to promoting sustainability in their engagement with learners. There is no national survey data available on the attitudes of staff in Scotland’s colleges towards sustainability issues. However, data does exist for the Scottish public generally. The Scottish Environmental Attitudes and Behaviours Survey (SEABS) 200815 commissioned by the Scottish Government involved face-to-face interviews with more than 3000 people in Scotland (aged 16+). The report shows that the Scottish public is beginning to engage with the environmental issues, and to participate in relatively ‘easy’ green behaviours such as recycling and reusing. The report identifies the challenge of moving forward to be to increase levels of engagement further among all sections of the public and specifically to persuade people of the need to make more significant lifestyles changes if environmental problems are to be tackled.
Colleges have used a range of strategies to raise the awareness of staff about sustainability issues. Sustainability and environmental committees with membership drawn from staff across the college have played an important role in moving the sustainability agenda forward. The majority of these committees included student members. In a few colleges the committees were composed almost entirely of volunteers and these were usually people with personal interests in sustainability. Committee remits varied, but usually included providing advice on the development, implementation and review of college policies on sustainability. Committees helped to inform college staff development programmes and often reviewed external developments in sustainability and considered implications for colleges. Examples of college initiatives driven by such committees included awareness raising days for staff, bike to work schemes, fair trade, efficient procurement, minimising waste, energy saving, biodiversity, recycling, and car sharing schemes.
Ayr College green travel day
Participation in college-wide staff development events and continuing professional development activities have contributed to staff awareness of sustainability issues. In most colleges visited, the activities of college estate management teams to reduce carbon footprints provide clear signals to staff of sustainability issues.
Staff development in sustainability
All colleges provided opportunities for staff to undertake continuing professional development activities in sustainability related to their specialist area. For example, construction and engineering staff had attended training events in micro-renewable technologies. However, only half of the colleges provided college-wide staff development events focused on sustainability issues. Such events often took the form of an environmental and sustainability awareness day for both staff and learners. Colleges used these events to launch green initiatives and with support from external speakers to provide national perspectives in sustainability.
A few of the colleges visited have successfully used staff with the necessary skills and experience to provide in-house training sessions. Scotland’s Colleges’ environmental consultant is a member of staff at Elmwood College and has successfully raised awareness of sustainability issues across that college. Perth College as a partner college in the UHI Millennium Institute established a Centre for Mountain Studies in 2000. The centre’s director holds the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) chair in sustainable mountain development. A seminar programme given by research students of the institute contributes to the greater awareness of sustainability issues among its staff and students.
A few colleges visited used ICT resources to provide staff with advice and guidance on sustainability issues.
Ayr College and Aberdeen College use well designed websites to provide staff with easily accessible resources for sustainability. The Ayr College Eco website on the college’s intranet is a repository of information about sustainability. It includes a discussion forum, notice of college events on sustainability and college achievements. The Eco website is well designed and easy to navigate. It provides an excellent resource for the development of sustainability across the college. Aberdeen College’s environmental and sustainability web pages provide up-to-date information about environmental and sustainability issues at the college. The pages are available on Abnet, the college’s intranet. The pages provide easily accessible links, general information and advice on environmental and sustainability issues.
More than a few colleges visited included consideration of sustainability issues within the induction programmes for new staff. Colleges accredited or working to ISO 14001 included induction sessions on environmental management systems as part of the induction for new staff. One college provided staff with comprehensive induction information on the sustainability features of their new campus. However, the majority of colleges have not developed sufficiently in this area.
Sustainability within arrangements for self-evaluation and internal review
Almost all the colleges have adopted the HMIE 2008 quality framework16 as the basis for their self-evaluation and internal review processes. The framework addresses sustainability explicitly in four key areas.
Quality indicator 2.2 Relevance of programmes and services to learner needs;
Quality indicator 5.4 Context and planning for learning and teaching;
Quality indicator 8.2 Management and use of resources and learning environments; and
Quality indicator 9.1 Educational aims, objectives and targets.
Sustainability is also a relevant issue in other quality indicators such as 1.3 Fulfilment of statutory duties and 2.3 Progress, attainment and wider achievement.
Colleges responded well to the inclusion of citizenship in the HMIE 2004 quality framework17, with citizenship themes featuring in programme team self-evaluation reports. Overall, colleges are at an early stage of implementing the 2008 quality arrangements. However, there were a few examples of sustainability issues being addressed in programme team self-evaluation reports. For example, the curriculum team self-evaluation report for a Support for Learning class at John Wheatley College recorded the successful introduction of the Access 3 unit Monitoring and Maintaining an Environmental Area, but noted that the learners needed more time in the college’s sensory garden to complete their learning tasks. The team subsequently acquired funds to enhance the variety of plants in the sensory garden (see below).
