Set up an Energy or Eco team to lead on energy efficiency at your school

Colville Primary School, Tuesday, 30 September 2025
30 points 12 pupils Change-maker KS1, KS2, KS3, KS4

 We set up an Eco Council in our school to give pupils a voice in helping to improve our environment and make our school more sustainable. Each year group selected two representatives, giving us a council of 12 children in total. Pupils who wanted to be involved applied to their class teacher, explaining why they would be a good Eco Council member and how they could help their class. This helped children learn about responsibility, leadership and teamwork. The Eco Council meets every two weeks to discuss environmental issues in the school, share ideas from their classes and plan actions such as reducing waste, saving energy and promoting recycling. Through this activity, pupils learned how to work together, listen to different opinions and take action on real-life environmental issues. Next, we will build on this by running whole-school campaigns, involving the wider community, tracking our environmental impact over time and sharing our progress.

Activity description

Some schools will already have an Eco-committee or similar which will take on this role. Other schools may choose to appoint a class to lead on energy efficiency. Decide which staff will support your team.

In most areas Energy Sparks can help support your Energy Team with visits or online sessions from trained professional educators, volunteer energy mentors or with STEM Ambassadors.  Please book a workshop here.

Educate your team about climate change and energy by carrying out some of the Energy Sparks Explorer activities. Make sure they are really knowledgeable about the importance of energy and climate change, at an appropriate level for their age. It is important that pupils have significant input into the decision-making process and take ownership of any energy saving plans made.

Set up the times and places for your team to meet, including when they will report to the school management team including governor representatives. Your team could split into several sub-groups focussing on different aspects of energy saving.

Your Energy Team will be responsible for reviewing the current energy use situation (using the Energy Sparks charts), developing an energy saving action plan, and monitoring, recording and reducing your energy use. They will particularly be responsible for communicating to your school community, conducting switch off campaigns and measuring how much energy is saved or wasted by pupil and staff behaviour. The group may decide to have a high profile energy efficiency campaign involving the whole school, possibly a power down/layer up day or switch-off fortnight. The team will also need to revisit energy issues on a regular basis to ensure that changes made are sustained over time.

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