Jennifer Rudd of Swansea University makes the case for ensuring that learners with special educational needs and/or disabilities receive appropriately adapted climate and sustainability education.
Climate change and sustainability education (CCSE) resources are being developed and delivered globally and locally by people passionate about ensuring that climate change is talked about and acted upon. However, a whole demographic of learners are being left out. Children attending special schools or alternative provision such as specialist teaching facilities or pupil referral units on the whole aren’t being taught about climate change or sustainability. Through a lack of appropriate resources being developed, to teachers feeling isolated, to insufficient specialised staff training, these learners are locked out of having parity of education with their mainstream peers.
This blog draws on a recent report (O’Connor et al., 2025) resulting from a collaboration between Swansea University and Eco-Schools, which discovered the barriers to teaching CCSE in SEN and alternative provision settings.
SEN and Alternative Provision Settings
Learners with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) may not be able to attend a mainstream setting for a number of reasons, including a lack of provision, behavioural challenges and/or a need for specialist support. There are a variety of alternative provisions across the UK including, but not limited to, special schools, specialist teaching facilities, pupil referral units, education other than at school provision, moderate learning needs provision, autistic units. Each setting will have its own curriculum, teaching methods, individual pupil targets, site and teaching staff. The teaching staff could consist of teachers, teaching assistants, youth workers, forest school or outdoor education leads and may be predominantly practitioner-led, as opposed to teacher-led in many settings. Learners in these settings will face different challenges to those in mainstream settings. They may be neurodivergent, have particular learning difficulties, have mobility challenges, experience emotional, social or behavioural difficulties that have seen them excluded from mainstream school. In SEN and alternative provision settings learners have to be provided with individual learning plans and curricula, and cannot be homogenised in the same way that learners in mainstream settings are. Therefore, treating this group of practitioners and learners the same way as those in mainstream settings is inappropriate, a different approach is required.
A Critical Resource Gap
Teachers and practitioners who contributed to our report raised the lack of specialised resources as a key barrier to teaching CCSE. Whilst resources are available and new ones regularly developed for learners in mainstream settings they do not translate across to SEN and alternative provision settings. The main reason for this is that the majority of children in specialist settings have some form of learning difficulty, which means that their academic ability does not match their chronological age. For older learners this could mean that they need resources aimed at key stage one, but the topics and illustrations would not be appropriate to their chronological age and so they’d be unlikely to engage. For younger learners, for example those in Key Stage One, resources for their chronological age would be pitched far too high because they would still be at the stage of learning to learn. In addition, resources need to be physically accessible for learners who have particular disabilities i.e. collecting leaves and sticks typically found on the ground isn’t possible for an early wheelchair user, listening for bird sounds isn’t possible for a deaf student.
The teachers and practitioners who contributed to our research told us of how they would spend significant amounts of time trying to adapt mainstream resources for their learners but found this demoralising. Some perceived that their learners wouldn’t grasp topics such as climate change and sustainability and so these practitioners wouldn’t try to teach this topic at all.
For climate change and sustainability to be of interest to a learner in a special school or alternative provision setting, the topics need to be interesting and relevant, building on knowledge that they’ve already accumulated. For example, there’s no point trying to teach learners about the changes to the planet over time if they have no concept of time. Learners will also better engage with learning that is hands-on, sensory and experiential. One teacher said how they taught that coal (a fossil fuel) is dirty by letting their learners play with coal and then taking them off to wash their hands. Another said they taught pollution by having clean water in a paddling pool and then they slowly add plastic to the pool and ask the learners whether it’s acceptable to have water with a load of rubbish in it. By engaging the learners’ senses and making the topic immediately relevant to them, knowledge transfer could occur.
Insufficient Staff Training
As with mainstream teachers, one of the things holding teachers and practitioners from special schools and alternative provision settings back was a lack of knowledge and a lack of confidence. Whilst staff training is available to all, such as carbon literacy training or Climate Fresk, it isn’t always appropriate for people from specialist settings and can lead to them feeling even more isolated and demoralised. One practitioner said that they came away from a training sessions with “no new ideas at all” because none of their learners could do what mainstream learners could do. It’s also important to include practitioners such as higher level teaching assistants and forest school leads to training, rather than advertising it explicitly for teachers, to reflect the wide range of teaching staff in special schools and alternative provision settings.
We recommend that staff training should have a mixture of teaching of a climate- or sustainability-related topic, tried-and-tested activities that are appropriate for SEN(D) learners and time for attendees to reflect and plan lessons that they can run back in their settings. Time for networking and informal sharing of ideas is also key so that practitioners feel less isolated is also really important. Finally, activities shared shouldn’t just be those appropriate for older learners, but should span the age ranges that the attendees teach.
Conclusions
Everyone has their own role to play in adapting to our warming world and helping to mitigate the impact of anthropogenic-induced planetary change. However, individuals can’t do that if they’re not provided with the knowledge or tools. Learners with SEN(D) have the right to a climate and sustainability education and have the potential to be powerful agents of change. Our responsibility, as practitioners and researchers, is ensure that learners with SEN(D) have parity of opportunity with their mainstream peers. Therefore, we need to develop and make available appropriate resources and training.
For further information please see O’Connor S., Rudd, J.A., Thomas, D.V., Bromley, B. (2025) “Climate Change and Sustainability Education in Additional Learning Needs and Alternative Provision Settings” online.flipbuilder.com/keepwalestidy/veyp/
