About Us

Sustainability and Environmental Education (SEEd) is a registered charity that identifies, promotes, enables and supports environmental education and education for sustainable development in the UK. 

We are an umbrella, membership organisation for Non-Government Organisations (NGOs), schools, colleges, universities, local authorities and educators interested in Environmental Education and ESD and the environment. SEEd works with these organisations, facilitating wide stakeholder engagement, promoting shared learning, building capacity and developing cross sector partnerships. Our services include:

 

SEEd Impact and change models

As an education charity, SEEd uses capacity building and marketisation as its main social change methods. It combines this with cross-sectoral learning, social learning, building innovation and new collaborations. The goal is to broaden and deepen the practice of education for sustainability and environmental education. When the opportunity arises SEEd uses policy advice based on both practice and need with government and with other organisations. By working with educators and the education system we are working to change societal attitudes and norms towards sustainability and environmental issues.

1. Building Capacity

As a membership, national ‘umbrella’ organisation SEEd supports organisations or individuals with training, learning events, identifying good practice and keeping up to date with policy and sustainability research. This helps educators keep going by being flexible, adaptive and effective. Our baseline surveys, website and newsletters contribute to building this understanding. Often these educators are ‘pioneers’ and are already very motivated to do this work. However our events, marketing and website are bring in new audiences and educators who are interested but not sure how to get started. We have one of the most visited websites in environmental and sustainability education in the UK (1.5 million hits/year).

As sustainability is only going to be achieved through working together, SEEd also focuses on helping build change agents capacity through modelling stakeholder processes, training in facilitation, training in and modelling of influence and marketing techniques. We have an extensive intern programme to encourage young people and train them without large expense to themselves.

Participants in Sustainable Schools conference gained:

How to involve the whole school in sustainable initiatives. How sustainable education affects/benefits attainment and achievement. Lucy Bartholomew, Lent Rise School
Broader understanding of ESD and practical ideas to take back to school. Strategic view of ESD and also hopefully better ways to encourage greener behaviours in school! Sam Mawby, Upper Shirley High

2. Encouraging collaboration

SEEd develops alliance, networks, and collaborative projects to ensure the education for sustainability work not only carries on but new ways of working and new practices are adopted. Many of SEEd’s members and supporters are individuals in organisations or in very small charities who can achieve more by joining together with others on projects. Our annual Policy Forum is a ‘seed’ bed for these alliances and collaborative projects. The biggest of these is the Sustainable Schools Alliance which seeks to bring together the over 300 registered organisations working on bring sustainability into the school campus, curriculum and community.
 

Ashden Awards Conference

The ‘sustainable schools’ framework has been completely removed. That’s the bad news. The good news is that there are is a group of organisations called the Sustainable Schools Alliance, led largely by SEEd [here in London], who are actually taking on the role of trying to promote this [‘sustainable schools’ framework] in schools. Mark Stead, Severn Wye Energy Agency
I also don’t think that there is anyone who is more aware of the reality of the current context in which learning for sustainability is now struggling to maintain its hard won position in the day-to-day life of schools across England [than SEEd]. Ben Hren, Waste Watch

3. Spreading good practice to new audiences

By gathering good practice and encouraging learning about change, SEEd influences policy and practice. The setting up of the Sustainable Schools Alliance was referenced by the Department of Education in the Natural Environment White Paper (Defra, UK July 2011) and shows how we have been able to influence government.
 

Defra: Natural Environment White Paper*

We also endorse the new Sustainable Schools Alliance, led by the National Children’s Bureau and Sustainability and Environmental Education, which was launched in March 2011. The Natural Choice: Securing the Value of Nature, ed. The Rt Hon. Caroline Spelman MP, p.48
SEEd runs the annual National Sustainable Schools Conference, and is also running and developing new, innovative training and courses online that don’t require travel or large cost to educators in these challenging times. Its regional networks also help deliver at local levels.
 
We were recently asked by UNESCO to promote and collate UK responses to a Decade for Education for Sustainability (DESD) survey of educational practice for sustainability in all sectors – schools, HE/FE, businesses, communities, government, giving a snapshot of current practice, understandings and gaps.

UNESCO

Networks and partnerships for ESD in schools and HE continue to flourish, in particular... Sustainability and Environmental Education (SEEd)...
 
SEEd has taken up a previously unoccupied role as a coordinator for national action on ESD, and its policies and actions since its launch reflect its importance as a driver for ESD action and the DESD. Education for Sustainable Development in the UK in 2010 UNESCO UK NC
Our biggest change project is our new Sustainability Curriculum Project, which aims to gather good practice and resources from pioneer educators across the UK, and then find a way to make this accessible and easy to engage with for non-engaged educators. Our goal is to change attitudes so that all educators feel it is the right of children, students, and workers to be able to live and work sustainably and to be able to constructively contribute to that work.