Climate crisis,school leadership and critical systems thinking: Reconnecting action and consequence

Abstract

The climate crisis indicates the need for profound change in schools and other educational establishments, in order to meet institutional zero carbon targets and to educate young people towards careers and lives which embed commitment to a sustainable world. Systems are required to achieve this, and yet it is precisely the operation of complex systems which created the crisis, by separating human agency from adverse consequences. The research explores aspects of this deep contradiction in the path towards more sustainable schools and schooling. Leaders describe the complex interconnected systems in which their schools are embedded and highlight the limits to their agency. Critical systems thinking is proposed, in which perceived boundaries are disrupted and the links between action and consequence can be remade.

Introduction and literature review

Schools are located within a complexity of interrelated systems operating at different scales: think not only of climate, but also economics, environment and educational systems, from localities to regions to nations and planet (Dixon, 2022). According to recent research, ‘sustainability begins with a commitment by the school leadership team and governors to address sustainability holistically, recognising that it is connected to the social practices of school life and the arrangements that enable or constrain patterns of activity’ (Finnegan, 2023: 13). School leaders need a vision of a sustainable school which translates ‘into day-to-day practice’ (Bezzina and Pace, 2006: 20), and this requires the multiple systems which schools work within to become sustainable.

There is strong evidence of educational impact for taking sustainability seriously. Literature relating to England points to the influence on raising standards, improving behaviour and having a positive impact on young people's well-being (Birney and Reed, 2009). The English schools inspectorate see sustainability as a ‘significant factor in improving teaching and learning’ (Ofsted, 2009: 4), providing ‘a meaningful, real-world focus which young people recognise as significant for their lives’ (p4). Furthermore, if young people can ‘see the school takes sustainability seriously’ then they understand the possibilities and value of participation (Birney and Reed, 2009; Department for Children Schools and Families, 2010; Gayford, 2009) and may engage more with community and family life (Keating et al., 2009; Percy-Smith and Burns, 2009). Birney and Reed (2009) found that a focus on sustainability developed ‘an ethic of care and a common vision for building a more just and inclusive society’ whilst improving the quality of the school environment ‘enhances young people's physical and mental health and safety’ (Thomas and Thomson, 2004).

In their action research on sustainable schools, Birney and Reed (2009) quote a young person moving from thinking sustainability was ‘all about recycling and saving energy’ to understanding, ‘how the parts fit together and have an impact upon society locally, nationally and globally’ (p25). They conclude, ‘This research demonstrates that a key aspect of leadership for sustainability is its systemic nature; the parts and whole affect and interact with each other. The leadership flows across and through traditional boundaries and categories and begins to connect otherwise disparate or disconnected thinking, activity and planning through the school and its community of practice’ (ibid. p.23).

Equally, Thunberg's school strikes began when she was ‘told to turn off the lights to save energy, and to recycle paper to save resources’ (2019: 5), with the implication that these actions would suffice, and since then many young people have adopted a critical stance, demanding a far more significant response to the climate crisis in schools and by schools (Dunlop and Rushton, 2022).

At the governmental level, many local authorities have set zero carbon targets, in an attempt to steer systems away from further temperature increases, and governments have produced related policy. The Department for Education in England published a white paper for COP27 in Glasgow (DfE, 2023a, 2023b) which initiated a new wave of activity to address the gaps in learning and action, a key pointer being that by 2025 all education settings need to have a sustainability lead and a climate change action plan. To support this, an array of programmes has been set up, including volunteer climate ambassadors to guide schools to becoming zero carbon, and funding to support schools in creating climate change action plans (Council for Science and Technology, 2020). The National Education Nature Park is a programme aimed at increasing biodiversity in school grounds.

But significant barriers remain to the action argued for by young people and required to meet net zero targets. Dixon (2022) cites three requirements for schools which include:

leadership time needed to fully implement sustainability due to national and local imperatives and associated bureaucracy.

finance to alter school infrastructure.

relevant education for teachers and support staff, for site staff and budget managers (ibid. p.32).

Naming these factors is a starting point, but it does not address the complexity of the school as an institution with, on the one hand, other significant priorities such as educational performance, and on the other hand, existing interlocking systems partly designed and partly inherited. Indeed, these factors emerge out of the complexity of the school as an institution. And far from addressing these factors, the focus of school leaders has been drawn elsewhere: responding to pandemic, funding shortfalls and teacher shortages (Harris and Jones, 2022). That the fast-approaching existential threat of climate change has not been higher on the radar of school leadership is unsurprising, given the immediacy of these challenges. However, as these relatively urgent issues are prioritised, the rapid pace of climate change (Ripple et al., 2024) continues to outstrip our practical response (UNEP, 2024).

From a historical perspective, this contradiction runs deep. Climate crisis is a product of industrialisation: the anthropocentric practice that began to create systems of production without regard for the consequential waste products. A point of origin was the north of England in the mid-1700s. Here, coalfields began to supplant the water power of the original mills in the river valleys, and factories grew larger and more profitable; workers moved into the city to work the factories; carbon began to spill into the atmosphere above the city, and the owners of the mills relocated to the edge of the countryside, where the air was still fresh. The workers made a living, whilst suffering the diseases of polluted air and crowded dwellings (Douglas et al., 2002; Malm, 2018). The system insulated the owners from the adverse consequences of their actions, whilst yielding them huge profits.

And so industrial capitalism is a system-story where an adverse consequence was created without thought, experienced by those without power and without the means to create capital, and largely unrecognised by those who stood to profit. And that consequence has grown into a global crisis, generations later, hugely amplified by the neoliberal consensus (Monbiot and Hutchison, 2024). The global unintended consequences can no longer be overlooked (IPCC, 2023). The IPCC states with high confidence that ‘every increment of global warming will intensify multiple and concurrent hazards’ (ibid. p.12).

A parallel process has taken place in schooling. Gardener-McTaggart (2025a) argues that neoliberalism has led to the commodification of education, which involves the system in ‘processes and practices which diminish Earth's biodiversity and contribute to climate change’ (p.1). Consequently, he argues for ‘transformative leadership in education’ (p.3) to break this cycle. We agree that a model of transformative leadership is necessary (Gardener-McTaggart, 2025b), but argue that in addition, there is a value in attending to current systems of schooling: how these impact on and limit the agency of school leaders, and so where change is possible.

This research is concerned with a small part of the inheritance of industrial capitalism – the modern school – at a time in human history when the unintended consequences of capitalism are now being felt, and which in the future will leave nothing untouched.

Methodology and methodological challenges

So how would school leaders respond, when invited to consider their response to climate and environmental goals set by national government and city regions, and how would they describe their actions in relation to the contested concept of sustainability?

In regard to ethics procedures, the university's ‘ethical decision tool’ was used. With researchers undertaking that this research entailed professional dialogue about matters which were not secret, exclusive, restricted, private, contentious or controversial, it was determined that formal approval of the ethics committee was not required. A formal ethical process was followed to invite and seek consent from potential participants.

Epistemologically, the field of response to climate and environmental crisis has to engage with the knowledge about climate and environmental change constructed through cumulative, multi-dimensional scientific processes, exploring how human actors are interpreting this knowledge and constructing positions based on this interpretation, in the context of their local situation. So the research adopted a constructivist-interprevist paradigm, developing knowledge of the perspectives of school leaders and analysing these to build conclusions about the constraints and opportunities that they felt were available to them in relation to the systems in which they were located. These conclusions were then analysed in relation to the systematic scientific knowledge of significant and challenging climatic and environmental consequences both locally and globally (IPCC, 2023).

Working through established professional connections, we applied a snowball sampling approach and offered school leaders (including headteacher, finance director, site manager) the opportunity of a structured online conversation, about their knowledge, aims and actions in relation to sustainability, and the support they thought they might need:

Towards the carbon-neutral school: we initiated the conversation asking whether the school had a plan or was considering creating a plan to meet the 2038 target.

Facilitation and barriers: we identified what actions schools were already taking, any blocks to productive changes, and any connections and contacts relevant to these actions.

Themes: Towards the end of the interview, we would ask about potential activities not yet mentioned. The list included the curriculum; building retrofit; school grounds; energy use and production; waste and recycling; travel and transport; sustainable purchasing; young people as activists; young people's and the community's participation.

Identifying productive questions: We identified questions that need to be addressed, such as: what and whose knowledge, attitudes, energy, skills, capacity, connections, are needed to bring about the necessary changes and how do these connect with the educational purpose of the school?

The nine schools who agreed to participate were already engaging with the agenda and saw the conversation as an opportunity to share.

The five primary school interviews involved three head teachers, an assistant head and eco-lead, a business manager and an eco-lead. In the four participating high schools, interviewees included among others a senior operations manager, a head of science, a geography teacher and an English teacher, all of whom were designated as eco-leads. The range of participants enabled the research to examine different systems nested in schools from a variety of perspectives.

A thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006) of all interview data was carried out, resulting in the identification of systemic opportunities and constraints facing school leaders. Two schools were then selected, one primary and one secondary, which largely typified these themes, so as to be able to represent for the reader the way that school leaders described their situation and what they had been able to do in response. These two case studies are presented below, and then the emerging themes are extended and developed with reference to the wider sample.

Case studies

The following case studies illustrate features of school activity which are common to many of the schools in our study, and which will be familiar to many people working with schools on the climate and environmental-related agenda. We use these to indicate relevant actions and issues, in the context of these particular institutions.

Primary school case study

One of the participating schools is a large inner-city primary, part of an Academy trust situated in an area of high deprivation. The school was built in the early 2010s. The interviewee was a relatively new head teacher focused on improving pupil behaviour and the curriculum. He informed us the school was in the early stages of including environmental issues in Geography and History, stressing the need to engage the pupils in the agenda by linking the formal and informal curricula: for example, setting up an eco-team to plant more trees to improve their school grounds.

There was a strong recognition of the need to reduce energy consumption, even before the energy crisis, with the head noting that despite the relative newness of the school building, the energy rating was poor. He stressed the need for specialist help to understand how the building could be improved with access to funding to enable improvements to be made. Another key topic raised was the potential of renewables and the aspiration that solar should be added to the school's infrastructure. Improving the school grounds and tree planting were viewed as being linked to climate change, alongside tackling waste, recycling and encouraging pupils to walk to school.

The headteacher had no awareness of the regional net zero target date, informed by climate science. He made no links to embedded carbon emissions from purchasing, or in relation to water or plastics. Food was not understood as a systemic contributor to climate change, but viewed as a separate health matter.

Secondary school case study

In a medium-sized PFI-built school in a relatively impoverished district of a large northern city, interviewees represented several sub-systems in the school, including a curriculum middle leader, the site manager and marketing lead. They recognised that the agenda for sustainability is having an impact, particularly within the curriculum. For example, a series of Geography lessons focus on climate change, involving half of pupils even in Years 10 and 11. Related science input is seen to be quite strong.

Leaders suggested that some young people are more activist in their orientation than staff, especially in matters of social justice, with concerns about pollution, unequal life chances and damage to ecosystems. Staff have supported pupil activism in recent years, with permission given to join a climate march and more water fountains installed, addressing pupils’ concern about single-use plastic. Many pupils cycle to school, and more bike shelters have been installed.

However, staff identified a leadership capacity issue, whereby day-to-day pressures of managing the school take precedence over strategic planning. As a result, some sustainability-related actions are actively pursued, but there is little consensus on priorities. The school is part of a multi-academy trust (MAT) with the capacity for projects which individual schools would find difficult, but leaders noted that information does not flow well from the MAT to the school. For example, the MAT had installed £250,000 worth of LED lighting here, but the school has no access to the energy usage data, which removes a direct incentive to change practices. Leaders were proud that the school sends no waste to landfill, and they have a contract with a local firm which sorts waste for either recycling or to be burnt for energy. However, they were unaware that this happens to most of the region's waste, or of the carbon released through incineration. Leaders were critical of, but lacking in agency regarding the poor alignment of building and maintenance systems in relation to energy usage. Ventilation is insufficient in the summer, for instance. Grass is typically mown very heavily, without regard for biodiversity, carbon capture and rainwater storage.

There are opportunities for change. Leaders are keen to get more support with the curriculum and infrastructure challenges, with training for governors seen as potentially useful. But currently, urgent issues of school management dominate over strategic thinking in relation to environmental sustainability.

Discussion: connections and disconnections

In this section, we extend discussion of the case studies with reference to the wider sample of schools included in the study, and discuss the linkages (and lack thereof) with national policy. In doing so, we describe the various systems which as they interact, make up the operation of these schools.

The two case studies resonate with connections to previous studies (Dixon, 2022) and also with the actions described across the wider group of schools, in relation to curriculum, energy use, waste management and the planting of trees; and in terms of barriers identified, specifically in terms of time, money and leadership capacity. All participating schools mentioned the formal and informal curriculum as an important focus for developing climate awareness across the school and as a way to engage young people in the agenda, referencing Eco Schools, School Parliaments and other methods of youth participation.

Participating schools understood that energy use in schools was important for addressing climate change, with each school highlighting their renewable energy sources or wanting to access them, a theme intensified by the recent increase in energy prices. All participating primary schools made reference to their grounds in terms of mitigating climate change, whether through tree planting, water retention or rewilding. There was a willingness on the part of the leadership in all of these schools to critically consider what had been achieved and what barriers stood in the way of further action. The leaders we spoke to in our selective sample were, on paper, in a strong position to lead the response to climate and environmental crisis. They are committed educators with an interest in issues of sustainability, and all could identify actions they had already taken or were in their school development plans which they thought would help to address climate change.

However, the disconnection between school systems remained. Only two of the nine participating schools professed any awareness of the regional 2038 zero carbon target, so that school systems were being driven without reference to any such targets. No schools had a climate change action plan, or were in the process of creating one. There was little reference to wider issues of embodied carbon in relation to procurement, or the emissions associated with externalities such as transport to school. Waste and recycling were frequently mentioned, but emissions relating to school purchasing, such as food, paper, water or human resources were ignored. These school systems were seen more or less in isolation from the wider infrastructures of which they are a part and upon which they depend. Mostly, school leaders were addressing sustainability themes within a sharply drawn boundary around the school.

From the perspective of critical systems thinking (Midgley, 1996; Shaked and Schechter, 2020), change in school practice involve changes in a complex set of interacting systems; the whole is always understood as greater than the sum of the parts, and the perceived boundaries of the school need to be queried and disturbed, if problems arising in systems are to be adequately addressed. Critical systems thinking draws attention to the interactions and boundaries between systems in and beyond the school, which give rise to the familiar but highly problematic phenomena of unintended consequences, unanticipated linkages and externalities. When we interpret our case studies from a critical systems perspective, a number of conclusions emerge:

Schools are widely imagined and seen as closed systems, both as a whole and in terms of internal structures. This is associated with the high-stakes accountability for school-level academic performance placed on schools and school leaders.

Schools can easily be imagined, from inside and out, as simply education institutions – having existence only in relation to their educational purpose – ignoring their real-world institutional impact in relation to carbon and other issues of climate and environmental crisis.

Within its perceived closed system, a school with a concern for sustainability tends to focus on themes and related actions which are relatively straightforward within that isolated sphere of operation, and what is perceived as core business, or business-as-usual (waste including plastics, school grounds including trees, energy usage).

Tackling carbon reduction in relation to processes which cross the boundaries of the school, such as the embedded carbon in food, or other purchasing decisions, is not seen as a priority.

Little attention is paid to the carbon costs of e.g. transport to and from school (of staff, pupils, etc.) because these are seen as occurring outside the school boundary.

There is little or no flow of information or knowledge about technical issues such as energy efficiency or retrofit across the boundary of the school, and little value given to such knowledge.

Zero carbon targets set at a regional or national level, and at a level more general than the education system, are not seen as relevant and meaningful priorities at the level of the school institution.

Schools receive almost no information from elsewhere about their carbon and environmental impact.

It is therefore simplistic to expect school leaders to take effective action to reduce carbon as required. Not only do they not necessarily have the knowledge or connections, but they lack the overview required for the system thinking that would inform the required decisions.

However, there are areas of strong practice to build on, as identified in this research. And moreover, headteachers already have some understanding of their schools as open systems through their roles in the community or as part of wider systems such as local authorities and academy chains. The issue of air pollution is instructive here. Schools do not have direct control over how pupils get to school, but many urban schools have tackled the school run by working with local authorities to change access routes or with the ‘School Streets’ initiative which closes roads at certain times of day. Such approaches beyond the school gates demonstrate the power of systems thinking in addressing external emissions (and, of course, reducing carbon).

It was notable that the school with the most developed strategic plan was one which, as an independent rather than state school, had no exemption from participation in the Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme (ESOS), an energy assessment scheme for large organisations based in the UK. In comparison, the state schools in our study appeared to lack agency and capacity for strategic action. These may be unintended consequences of academisation, but as has been suggested, leadership needs to be galvanised at a new level which extends ‘beyond a single school’. For example, MATs have centralised decision-making and economies of scale (Finnegan, 2023) with significant influence across larger systems.

At the national level, schools are being encouraged to participate in creating climate change action plans with local authorities, NGOs and climate ambassadors intended to act as support mechanisms, but this is not a requirement. Both Eco Schools and Global Action Plan have devised school climate change action planners, whilst the Department of Education have supported the creation of Standardised Carbon Emissions Reporting Framework (EAUC, 2022) including Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions which is being trialled within HE and FE setting. If it proves adaptable, it may be made available to all education settings.

However, our study strongly suggests that significant education will be needed for staff in schools to understand carbon footprinting, and to locate the appropriate expertise and information about companies that can deliver the work, particularly given the legal risks around the making of commercial recommendations. Systems designed to ensure fair competition have the unintended consequence of hindering the access of schools to necessary information about companies. Linking schools more directly with the companies and institutions best able and most affordable to help them reach zero carbon is especially important whilst the reporting systems remain non-mandatory: schools are under no obligation to prioritise the agenda, and as we have seen, have little capacity to do so.

In summary, it seems that despite their willingness to engage with sustainability themes, few schools in our sample had much knowledge of the consequences of their operations, or of local carbon targets, or felt any mandate to act as part of change across wider school systems.

Conclusions

In this study, we interviewed school leaders who have a role in managing the various school systems that contribute to the climate crisis, on the basis that they would be well positioned to bring about changes in the education sector. It is clear that understanding schools as systems helps to describe significant aspects of their operation – but it is equally clear that the current operation of these systems can limit leaders’ abilities to respond to the climate crisis Gardener-McTaggart (2025a).

We argue that critical systems thinking (Shaked and Schechter, 2020) can accelerate a response. So we make the following recommendations:

All stakeholders need to see the consequences of their actions. Government could promote a digital feed to schools giving their estimated net carbon costs. This information could be prominently displayed in schools to parents, staff and pupils, including estimates relating to energy, food, waste, grounds, heating, transport, etc. and used as an educational tool within the school. This would help stakeholders to understand that carbon is embedded in all their school systems, and that all systems can be redesigned to reduce carbon.

Government, MATs and other such bodies and networks should engage in critical systems thinking in relation to carbon reduction, informing a proactive leadership and coordination role, and supporting school leaders to take action within that coordinated approach: for instance, by providing examples of climate change action plans, or climate crisis response plans, and supporting the early stages of their implementation.

Systems within and across schools need to be oriented towards increased sustainability. For example, repairs and maintenance actions could be required to achieve higher environmental standards and improve a school's climate resilience. School maintenance funding could be linked to carbon reduction through retrofit and insulation. Financial information systems should be redesigned (with appropriate legal checks and balances) to facilitate access to significant information.

The deep problem of climate change, and the lack of effective responses, lies with the operation of systems which obviate critical thinking, and which remove the link between action and consequence (Monbiot and Hutchison, 2024). The solutions therefore require systemic change and critical systemic thinking: interrogating perceived boundaries, working purposefully to connect parts and whole at every level.