Post-16 Climate Education and Skills Group
The Post-16 Climate Education and Skills Group brings together colleagues from higher education, further education, government, industry and NGOs to collaborate on one of the most urgent challenges of our time: equipping learners, staff, and institutions with the knowledge and skills to deliver a sustainable future.
Originally formed in the lead-up to COP26 as part of the UK Universities Climate Network, the group has since evolved into a UK-wide forum for collaboration, advocacy, and action. Co-chaired by EAUC and the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London, the group connects post-16 education with the wider climate education movement, ensuring that colleges and universities are recognised as vital partners in the transition to net zero.
Get in touch to find out moreOur aims
Strengthen climate and sustainability education across curricula, qualifications, and professional standards
Support educators and leaders through accessible CPD and professional development
Build strong partnerships between education and employers to shape green skills pathways
Influence policy and funding by sharing evidence, insights, and good practice with government and sector bodies
Embed whole-organisation approaches, ensuring post-16 providers are well equipped to lead by example on sustainability.
EAUC /Tobie Charlton
Current priorities
Our action plan focuses on embedding sustainability across post-16 qualifications, developing lifelong learning offers, and ensuring all learners have access to climate-related careers information and guidance:
Embed climate and sustainability leadership as a core expectation for all post-16 education institutions, reinforced through existing regulatory, funding and assurance mechanisms.
Embed climate and sustainability knowledge, skills, and attitudes into qualification specifications, revised curriculum standards and accreditation frameworks.
Ensure all educators, trainers, lecturers, and institutional leaders can access role-specific, high quality and accessible CPD.
Build relevant climate and sustainability competencies into the professional standards used by those who work in the post-16 education sector.
Integrate education for sustainable development (ESD) into all teacher education, academic development and workforce training, including initial teacher education (ITE), doctoral training programmes, and staff inductions
Strengthen partnerships between employers and education providers to co-design and co-deliver climate and sustainability learning, ensuring employers clearly articulate their green skills needs and help shape relevant, real-world provision. Government and sector bodies should support this through shared tools and frameworks to identify and track emerging green competencies.
Ensure all learners have access to climate and sustainability related careers information, advice and guidance (IAG) tailored to post-16 learners — including employer encounters and access to future-focused LMI.
Support a national lifelong learning offer on climate and sustainability skills, including flexible, modular and employer-responsive provision for adults, career-changers, and communities most affected by the transition to net zero.
Ensure that all further and higher education institutions develop and deliver a holistic whole-organisation sustainability strategy, aligned to national net zero targets and the UN SDGs, encompassing curriculum, research, operations, procurement, governance and partnerships.
Invest in provider capacity to deliver high-quality climate education, including facilities, curriculum development, digital infrastructure, and staff recruitment and development, particularly in context of challenging finances.
We also work closely with the National Climate Education Action Plan group to ensure strong post-16 representation alongside school-level action.
We are also working to build capacity within the group itself: widening our reach, strengthening connections, creating shared tools, and building the collective voice needed to increase our momentum and influence across the sector and with government.
Get involved
The group is open to colleagues from further and higher education, employers, government, and wider partners who want to shape and deliver climate education and green skills in post-16 education.
If you would like to join, contribute or find out more, please contact us.
Get in touch
EAUC / Tobie Charlton
