• Do you know the school’s recent annual kWh for electricity and fossil fuels (gas, oil, LPG)?
• Do you know the school’s current electricity and fossil fuels costs, including price per kWh?
• Do you record or confirm meter readings regularly?
• Do you know the school’s recent annual tonnes of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) from energy consumption?

• Do you compare the school’s annual kWh and CO2e year on year, noting changes?
• Do you know the school’s annual kWh per m2 and compare this year on year?

• Do you know the insulation levels in the school’s walls, roofs, and floors?
• Do you review controls for external lighting to ensure they are off when not needed?
• Do you know the school is heated, including the different systems and where controls are located?
• Do you know the set temperature and heating times?

• Develop an action plan, with clear targets for managing your school building’s energy use going forward.
• Have documented procedures to manage day-to-day energy use, including logging any improvements made, so you can check them against the data collected.
• Agree whose responsibility it will be to oversee day-to-day energy use, for example, a building caretaker.
• Decide how to measure overall progress against your targets and set up regular reviews – this can also help with communications.
• Agree whose responsibility it will be to lead on strategy and reviews, for example, a school governor or trustee, an interested teacher, a member of the management team, or the building caretaker.

• Ensure your management committee regularly reviews the strategy for making the building work more efficiently when it comes to energy and move towards Net Zero carbon emissions as soon as possible.
• Ensure that training is regularly updated and repeated when necessary. This might occur when new people join, when new technologies are adopted (such as new heating), or even when a reminder just proves beneficial.
• Share any targets you have set with those using and helping run the building, as well as updates on how it is going – say ‘thank you’ when improvements are made or targets met.
• Include people who are in the school out-of-hours, such as cleaners.

Don’t forget to communicate your successes

Highlighting the positive environmental impact of your school’s efforts is not only valuable for internal motivation but also serves as a powerful tool for communicating your commitment to the wider community.

Once you have your data at your fingertips, an energy strategy and people on board, it’s time to start on some improvements. Download the full checklist for some small actions with big results.