Case Study:
The primary school that added climate resilience to its safeguarding policy
Danielle Ware & Sara Farish
Co-Sustainability Leads,
Drake Primary School,
Thetford,
Norfolk
“I don't think it should be a choice whether the schools decide to weave climate change in or not. It needs to be part of the statutory curriculum.”
Year 3 teacher Danielle Ware and forest school lead Sara Farish are reshaping how climate change is taught at Drake Primary School by beginning in geography and science, linking global impacts to children’s local experiences in Norfolk, and expanding from there. Alongside factual learning, lessons make space for pupils to acknowledge feelings such as eco-anxiety and connect them to practical action. As this work developed, the school took the rare step of updating its safeguarding policy to formally recognise climate impacts as a risk to children’s wellbeing and education.
Drake Primary School in Thetford, Norfolk is quietly reshaping climate education around truth, care and constructive hope.
Danielle Ware (Year 3 teacher) and Sara Farish (forest school lead) are the school’s joint sustainability leads. They started their journey with CAPE’s (Climate Adapted Pathways in Education) Climate Wise Schools course – training both teachers describe as transformative. “It gave us the scientific facts… and it really helped our confidence.” says Ware. “You can't just expect to do this work if you haven't built on your own knowledge and understanding.”
They expected to learn more about the science. What they didn't anticipate was how quickly facts would give way to feelings. “I hadn’t heard of eco-anxiety,” Farish says. “But then starting to learn about climate change, I was feeling it myself … Going through those emotions has improved my ability to be able to support the children, because I can actually relate to it.”
Transforming this new knowledge into action was the next step. “Don’t rush. Do it well and do it once,” is the pair’s advice for other schools.
Rather than racing to overhaul the entire curriculum, Ware and Farish have begun with geography and science, carefully mapping where climate naturally weaves in and making it come alive for children.
Both are keen to emphasise the importance of local connections to global issues. Coastal erosion in Norfolk sits alongside the Solomon Islands. Flooding in nearby towns is discussed beside global sea-level rise. “For them to see it happening in their local context and link it to climate change, that's what we've just started to do with our curriculum… How might climate impact a child growing up in Thetford in 2025?”.
Teaching climate emotions, not just climate facts
A defining feature of Drake’s approach is the emphasis on emotional literacy alongside rigorous facts, with every climate session including space for eco-anxiety and constructive hope.
This modelling matters. Farish describes moments where children watch footage of disappearing islands or burnt forests and fall silent. “You could see that they were really shocked,” she says. “As teachers, we have those conversations and say, well, I just watched that and actually it made me feel really sad, and it's okay to feel that way.”
Constructive hope, they stress, is not naive positivity. It’s always tied to tangible action: planting a “halcyon forest” where every child names a tree; maintaining an allotment and wetland area; writing sustainability updates in the weekly newsletter so learning ripples out into families; and encouraging pupils to make household changes, like sorting recycling or noticing when water is wasted.
“We must start empowering these children to know that they can take action and they can make a change,” they say.
"Going through those emotions has improved my ability to be able to support the children, because I can actually relate to it."
One of Drake’s most innovative steps – rare among UK schools – has been incorporating climate change directly into its safeguarding policy.
The updated policy now formally recognises climate impacts as risks to children’s safety, wellbeing, and consistent access to education. “We are all held accountable for it,” Farish explains. “It's also something that does bring it home that this is something that's happening now.”
A whole-school approach
None of this, they emphasise, would be possible without a supportive leadership team and governing body. The school had already installed solar panels and invested in electric minibuses before the curriculum work even began. When sustainability leads from other schools visit Drake, Farish and Ware give the same advice: don’t rush. Build foundations, build confidence and build community.
Staff training is a crucial part of that. Many teachers last encountered climate science when they were pupils themselves, and Drake’s leads are aware of the emotional labour involved. The school’s wellbeing structures – quiet outdoor spaces, worry boxes, regulation stations – are used to support adults as much as children.
Both teachers are clear about one systemic barrier: the absence of statutory climate education from reception to the end of secondary school. “I don't think it should be a choice whether the schools decide to weave it in or not… It needs to be part of the statutory curriculum,” Farish says.
Drake Primary shows what is possible within the constraints of one state primary school: careful, relational, hopeful. But as the climate crisis accelerates and emotions heighten, Ware and Farish argue that schools cannot carry this work alone: “Our children could leave and go to their secondary school and then they never touch it again. All the schools need to work together.”
This case study was written by Sarah Trott.
