On Wednesday 20 May 2026, the Phase 1 Impact Report was published, showcasing the reach and impact of the Climate Ambassadors programme between its launch in September 2024 and December 2025.

Data from across the Climate Ambassadors programme, combined with data from the National Education Nature Park, Sustainability Support for Education and Let’s Go Zero programmes, shows that we might already have crossed an important tipping point in education. More than half of education settings, nearly 13,000 of those on the Get Information About Schools database, have already begun taking climate action. This is a positive tipping point, one towards behaviour change and pro-environmental attitudes. 

Whilst this is great news, for us, the success of the Climate Ambassadors programme is about more than the raw numbers. It’s about education improvement.  

If we get this right, it means more comfortable teaching and learning environments, more resilient settings, and better support for learners – so that they’re equipped for life, today and in the future. Achieving that requires long-term, systematic change in how the sector thinks about climate and nature, and sustained support to turn intent into action. 

This impact report goes deeper into helping us understand the ways in which climate action is enabled by developing a climate action plan and how Climate Ambassadors support settings to do this. 

Of course, as with any dataset there are limitations and nuances that we need to be aware of and clear about – the insights shared are from those actively engaging with climate and sustainability action; reach does not necessarily equate to impact; there’s the possibility non-Climate Ambassador programme activity has been included. But what our phase one impact report absolutely does show is that large numbers of settings are actively seeking our support and turning that into broad climate action plans that address adaptation, biodiversity, climate education and green careers and decarbonisation.  

The examples highlight work right across the country in a wide variety of different education settings. There is momentum, appetite and means available to settings to help them take their next steps, wherever they are on their sustainability journey. 

We’re incredibly proud of the settings and volunteers who are taking action, and of the programme team and our network of supporter organisations and collaborators, who’ve contributed to everything that’s been done in the first phase of the programme. 

Our challenge in phase two of the programme is two-fold – both to expand this work to support more settings, and deepening the work we do with them. We know that going beyond the positive tipping point will need concerted action from everyone within education, but after phase one we feel this is more in reach than ever.

– Charlotte Bonner and Andrew Charlton-Perez OBE, Climate Ambassadors Co-Leads

You can find the full report on the Our Impact page.