The Government in England wants every school to be a sustainable school by 2020. The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) launched their Sustainable Schools Framework in 2006 when the Secretary of State for Education, the Rt Hon Alan Johnson MP set out challenging long-term aspirations for schools to mainstream learning about sustainable development issues and sustainable practices into everyday school life.

Eco-Schools is a programme for environmental management and certification, designed to implement sustainable development education in schools by encouraging children and youth to take an active role in how their school can be run for the benefit of the environment.

The Eco-Schools Programme employs an holistic, participatory approach, combining learning and action, thus providing an effective method for improving the environments of schools and producing actual awareness raising and behavioral change in young people, school staff, families, local authorities, and so on, having significant repercussions in the local communities.

Eco-Schools is one of the programmes of the Foundation for Environmental Education (FEE – www.fee-international.org) and, as such, it is implemented through FEE Member organizations (one per country). Currently, the Programme is being implemented by 46 delegations in 43 countries around the world, involving 27,000 schools, 6,000,000 students, 400,000 teachers and 4,000 local authorities.

The Eco-Schools Programme also develops other projects (such as the Environment and Innovation Project - http://www.eco-schools.org/innovation2008/index.php - supported by Toyota Motor Europe through the Toyota Fund for Europe.) and tools (such as the Teacher’s Corner), which Eco-Schools can use to enhance their environmental performance in fun ways.