Meeting the DfE’s 2025 Climate Action Plan Deadline — Made Easy
By the end of 2025, the Department for Education (DfE) requires every school in England to have a Climate Action Plan. These plans are central to cutting emissions, protecting biodiversity, preparing schools for climate risks, and embedding sustainability in the curriculum. For Multi Academy Trusts (MATs), this is both a challenge and an opportunity. With multiple schools at different stages of readiness, managing data and ensuring consistency can quickly overwhelm leaders. What MATs need is a clear, centralised system that simplifies reporting, meets compliance requirements, and drives real impact.
The Challenge for MATs
Every Climate Action Plan must reflect the four pillars of the DfE’s Sustainability and Climate Change Strategy:
- Decarbonisation – cutting carbon emissions from estates, energy, and travel.
- Biodiversity – enhancing school grounds and encouraging engagement with nature.
- Adaptation & Resilience – preparing estates for risks such as extreme heat or flooding.
- Climate Education & Green Skills – embedding sustainability in teaching and preparing pupils for future green careers.
For MAT leaders, coordinating these four pillars across multiple schools is complex. Data is often inconsistent, reporting fragmented, and progress uneven. Without the right tools, compliance risks becoming a burden rather than a chance to lead.
The Solution: Climate Action Planning & Management (CAMP) Tool & support from Blue Marble
The platform provides an easy-to-use Climate Action Planning & Management (CAMP) tool, designed specifically for MATs. It consolidates every school’s Climate Action Plan into a single secure dashboard, removing the need for spreadsheets and enabling live oversight.
With the platform you can:
- Consolidate all plans in one place.
- Monitor progress against DfE pillars in real time.
- Generate reports instantly for governors, trustees, and Ofsted.
- Share best practice across your schools. This transforms compliance into leadership, enabling MATs not just to meet the 2025 requirement, but to embed sustainability across their trust.
Success in Practice – Plymouth CAST
Plymouth CAST, a trust of 36 schools across the South West, chose Blue Marble Sustainability as their partner. Their decision was based on confidence in both the CAMP tool and Blue Marble’s expertise: “We chose to work with Blue Marble because their CAMP tool gives each of our schools the structure to develop Climate Action Plans consistently, while providing the Trust with oversight and visibility. Their partnership with the Department for Education on the national Sustainability Support for Education service gave us real confidence in their credibility and impact. Blue Marble combine expertise with practical solutions that help us live out our mission of stewardship and care for creation.”
Rose Colpus-Fricker, Chief Operating Officer
Plymouth CAST Multi Academy Trust
The Blue Marble Advantage
Blue Marble are education sector specialists with a strong history of delivering sustainability services and support. We understand the challenges schools face — from estate management to curriculum integration — and bring a proven track record of helping leaders turn climate ambition into measurable action.
We offer:
- Full onboarding of every school into the CAMP tool
- Long-term consultancy to guide implementation and impact
- Shared learning from other MATs to accelerate your journey
With this partnership, MATs don’t just meet the DfE’s deadline — they build capacity to lead on sustainability for years to come.
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