Eco-Schools: Measuring your impact

Welcome to this video on how to measure the impact of your Eco-Schools actions.

Always remember when working on any part of Eco-Schools to not only think about what you are doing but why you are doing it. What is the purpose?

So why do you need to measure? Measuring allows you to track the progress of your actions over time. This helps to really see the difference you are making, especially if you can compare back to your starting point.

Measuring the impact of your actions will help you find out if those actions have been successful in achieving your aims. The outputs from your measuring are very useful to share what you are doing with others and encourage them to help you have an even bigger impact.

You can also use your measuring to contribute to Citizen Science campaigns to have a national or even global impact.

Remember, you can use our Action Plan template to plan your aims, actions and measuring. You don't need a different method of measuring for each action — just at least one per aim.

When you are writing your Action Plan, remember it all starts with the issue we want to fix or change. We then imagine how we would like it to be — what would it look like if the issue was fixed or better? This is our aim.

We then decide what we are going to do to make our aim happen — those are our actions. Measuring is the way we know that our actions worked in achieving our aim. It is important to remember that our measuring should link back to our aim rather than our actions.

Let’s look at an example to understand this further.

In this example, our environmental review has shown us that as a school we don’t know much about how food is grown. This leads to our aim: to learn more about how food is grown.

One action we have decided to take to fulfil this aim is to grow our own potatoes. We decide to measure our success by weighing the potatoes we grow. However, whilst this tells us if we were successful in growing potatoes — which is great — it doesn’t tell us if we have learned how food is grown.

So let’s think of a different way of measuring this action. Here we plan to have a class discussion about what we learned during our action to grow potatoes. This relates back to our aim rather than our action, and this is the way we would like you to complete your Action Plan and think about your measuring.

Another thing to think about is what you are aiming for your measuring to show.

In this example, our school has lots of litter in the grounds. We want to aim for no litter in our grounds. To achieve this, we are going to conduct regular litter picks, and we will measure the amount of litter we collect on each litter pick.

When we come to look at the results, we might think we want to see more litter collected each time as it shows we are doing a good job of collecting the litter on our litter picks. But remember, our aim is to have no litter in our school grounds. So we actually want to see that the weight is going down each time and we’ll eventually get to zero if we have achieved our aim.

Remember, you can update your Action Plan as you go. So if you find that litter picking alone is not reducing the amount of litter you are collecting, you may want to add extra actions to help achieve your aim.

One very important part of measuring is to start with a baseline. Using this litter example, if we didn’t start weighing the litter we collected the first time we did a litter pick, we would not know if the weight was increasing or decreasing over time.

By starting with a baseline, we can track changes over time and really see the difference we are making.

Now you understand how to relate your measuring to your aims, let’s think about the options you have to measure if your actions have achieved your aims.

First we’ll look at measuring using numbers. There are lots of ways to measure your impact using numbers: you can weigh things, measure using tape measures, count things, do surveys, do quizzes. You can even find out if you can access things like your school’s energy usage.

Numbers can be easily understood, interpreted and shared with others. Numbers are a great tool to create visual versions of your measuring, helping your maths, computing, and even art skills. You can create graphs, tables, charts, or any other way you can think to represent your data.

However, there are lots of ways to measure the impact of your actions that don’t require numbers. You can keep learning journals and floor books. You can use things like traffic light systems or other visual representations of what’s happening.

You can take photos before, during and after your actions. You can ask each other what you have learned and what you think about what you have achieved. You can have discussions about the subjects you're working on and find out what everyone thinks and feels. You can survey each other or your community to ask what they think of a project.

There are many, many ways to measure if you have achieved your aims. If you are not sure how to measure an aim, please contact us and we will be happy to help.

Now you understand how to measure, go back to your Action Plan and look at your aims and actions, and think about the best way to measure if your actions have achieved your aims.

The best measuring is planned ahead. Don’t forget to record a baseline at the start so you can really see the impact you are having. And make sure to keep records of your measuring somewhere that your Eco-Committee can easily find them, so they are ready to share when you come to submit your Green Flag Award application.

Thank you for listening. We wish you well on your Eco-Schools journey.