Here is something worth thinking about before your next sustainability meeting.
Maybe it’s an active travel plan, one that encourages pupils to walk or cycle to school. It is good for the environment, and it’s is good for pupils’ health. It is, on paper, exactly the kind of thing a climate-conscious school should be doing. But when we think of a just transition and how that transfers to the school we need to ask – which pupils in your school can actually do it?
For the active travel part of your plan – that means asking who has a bike? Who has a safe route? Who lives close enough? Who has a parent who can afford the kit, or has time to walk with a young child, or lives in an area where the roads feel safe enough to cycle?
And who does not?
This is a just transition question – not at the level of government policy or industrial strategy, but at the level of what happens in your school, in your community, every day. The green choices schools promote are not equally available to all pupils. And if we do not notice that, we risk making climate education feel like something designed for someone else.
What the just transition actually means for your school
The just transition is the idea that moving to a green economy should be done in a way that is fair – that those who bear the costs of the transition are not the same people who were already least responsible for the problem.
At the level of national policy, this is about workers in fossil fuel industries, communities built around coal or oil, countries in the Global South that contributed least to climate change but are most affected by it. We have explored the UK dimension of this in our piece on working class communities and the green transition, and the international picture in our posts on Brazil and El Nino.
But the same principle plays out at a smaller scale, in schools, every time we promote a green behaviour without asking who can afford it, who it was designed for, and who gets left out.
Transport: who can actually cycle to school?
Active travel is one of the most popular sustainability initiatives in schools. The government’s June 2026 cycling and walking investment strategy set a target of 60% of children travelling actively to school by 2035. Currently only 2% of UK pupils cycle to school, and 45% use any form of active travel.
Cycling to school is, genuinely, cheaper in the long run. The Bikeability Trust calculated in 2026 that a family cycling the school run saves over £1,000 a year compared to driving. But getting to that saving requires an upfront investment — a decent bike, a helmet, a lock, waterproofs. For a family already stretched, that upfront cost is a barrier that the long-term saving does not immediately solve.
There are other barriers that money cannot fix at all. A pupil who lives five miles from school on a fast rural road cannot cycle safely regardless of what they can afford. A pupil in an area with no protected cycling infrastructure faces risks that are not equally distributed. A pupil whose parents work early shifts cannot be walked to school. A pupil with a disability may find active travel difficult or impossible in ways the school’s plan has not considered.
The numbers: Only 2% of UK pupils currently cycle to school (Sustrans, 2021).The government’s 2026 active travel strategy targets 60% of children travelling actively to school by 2035. Cycling the school run saves families over £1,000 per year – but requires upfront costs many families cannot meet. Barriers include road safety, distance, disability, cost, and lack of infrastructure.
Sources: Bikeability Trust (2026), Active Travel England (2026), POST Parliament (2025)
None of this means schools should abandon active travel plans. It means they should design them with these isssues in mind. Loan bike schemes, secure storage, honest acknowledgement that active travel is more accessible for some pupils than others — these are all part of making the plan genuinely inclusive.
Food: when the sustainable choice costs more
School food is one of the most direct connections between sustainability and a just transition – and can be, in my experience, one of the most controversial.
In January 2026, 2.2 million pupils in England were eligible for free school meals – 26.5% of all state-funded pupils, the highest rate since records began. From September 2026, the government extended eligibility to all families on Universal Credit, providing free school meals to 500,000 additional children. Despite this welcome expansion, an estimated 800,000 children living in poverty remain excluded from eligibility.
When schools develop sustainable food policies – moving toward plant-based options, sourcing locally, reducing processed food – the impact falls differently across the school community. For pupils who bring packed lunches, only 1.6% of packed lunches meet school food standards. The families packing those lunches are not failing to care. They are, in many cases, doing the best they can within a budget that does not stretch to the sustainable options.
The cultural dimension matters too. Moving toward plant-based school meals is, nutritionally and environmentally, well-supported. It is also, for some communities, a change that touches on cultural identity, religious practice, and what food means in a family. A climate action plan that does not account for that is not just transition – it is imposition.
The numbers: 2.2 million pupils in England eligible for free school meals – 26.5% of state-funded pupils (January 2026). From September 2026: extended to all Universal Credit households – 500,000 more children. 800,000 children in poverty still excluded from free school meal eligibility (Sustain, 2026).
Only 1.6% of packed lunches meet school food standards (University of Leeds research). 4.5 million children (31% of all children) in relative poverty in 2023/24. Sources: House of Commons Library (2026), Sustain (2026), Child Poverty Action Group (2025)
The school canteen is one of the most powerful levers schools have for both sustainability and social justice. Used well – with good food, universal access, and cultural sensitivity – it can be a genuine example of the just transition in practice. Used poorly, it reinforces the idea that sustainability is something that happens to some people at the expense of others.
A Just Transition in school: The global connection
The injustice of the green transition does not stop at the school gate. It connects, directly, to the choices made in school canteens, supply cupboards, and technology budgets.
The cheap school PE kit comes from somewhere. The Chromebooks in the classroom contain cobalt, most of which is mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo under conditions that the supply chain rarely makes visible. The food in the canteen – the palm oil, the chocolate, the coffee in the staff room – is connected to land use and labour conditions in countries that are also bearing the greatest burden of climate change.
This is not a reason to feel paralysed or guilty but it is a reason to teach it and acknowledge it. Young people who understand that their consumption connects to places and people far away – that the cheap PE shirt and the mining village and the warming ocean are part of the same system – are better equipped to think about what justice means than those who are only asked to turn off the lights.
The families of pupils in your school, perhaps they can absorb rising food prices at some level of discomfort. The farmers growing that food often cannot. The El Nino-linked disruptions affecting rice, palm oil, and sugar production in Southeast Asia and East Africa are hitting communities that contributed least to the emissions driving those disruptions.
The classroom connection: The global just transition and the school just transition are the same story at different scales. Pupils who see the local version – who in our school can cycle, who can afford the plant-based option – are better placed to understand the global version.
A Just Transition: What schools can actually do
Schools operate within budget constraints, within community contexts, within policy frameworks they did not design. The point is not to make schools feel responsible for global injustice but to to help them notice when their climate actions are inadvertently reproducing inequality – and to do better where they can.
On transport:
- Audit who your active travel plan actually reaches – survey pupils and the wider community on barriers, not just intentions
- Invest in bike loan schemes so that cost is not the barrier – funding may be available through Active Travel England
- Design active travel messaging that does not assume everyone has a bike or lives nearby
- For schools in areas of poor cycling infrastructure, advocate alongside the local authority rather than placing the burden on individual families
On food:
- Advocate for universal free school meals at every opportunity – the evidence on attainment, health, and social cohesion is strong
- When developing sustainable food policies, involve pupils and families from across the school community
- Be honest about cost when promoting sustainable food choices to families
- Recognise that cultural food traditions have value and do not need to be replaced in order to be sustainable
On the global connection:
- Use the school’s supply chain as a curriculum resource – where does the kit come from, what are the conditions?
- Connect local sustainability choices to global consequences – the canteen menu and the climate crisis are part of the same story
- Teach the just transition as a concept explicitly – pupils who understand it are better equipped for the world they are inheriting
On the climate action plan:
- Apply an equity lens to every action in your plan – who benefits, who bears the cost, who is left out?
- Involve pupils from across the school community in developing the plan, not just those already engaged with environmental issues
- Name the just transition explicitly in your plan – it signals that your school understands climate action as a justice issue, not just an environmental one
The bottom line
Climate action in schools is not politically neutral. Every choice about transport, food, energy, procurement, and curriculum reflects values, about what matters, whose experience is centred, and who is assumed to be the audience.
A just transition in schools means noticing those choices and making them deliberately. It means designing sustainability initiatives that work for the whole community, not just the parts that already have access to the green economy. It means connecting the local to the global – the school’s PE kit and the mining village, the canteen’s palm oil and the drought in Southeast Asia.
And it means being honest with pupils about all of it. Not to overwhelm them, but to equip them. The young people in your classrooms are inheriting an unequal world. They deserve a climate education that takes that inequality seriously – activities and discussion linked to this post can be found here.
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notyetzero supports schools with Carbon Literacy training, Climate Fresk, climate action planning, and curriculum development. For support building a climate action plan that takes equity seriously, get in touch.
Related reading
Who Is Climate Education Actually For? Working Class Communities and the Green Transition
When Climate Education Is About Survival: What the Global Picture Tells Us
Your Climate Action Plan — the full guide
References
POST Parliament — Active travel briefing (March 2025)
House of Commons Library — School meals and nutritional standards: England (July 2026)
House of Commons Library — Food poverty: Households, food banks and free school meals (July 2026)
Sustain — Healthy school food for all (2026)
DfE — School food standards: updating the legislative framework (consultation, 2026)
