For many years, OMEP UK’s work on sustainability in early childhood education took place in a setting that is familiar to anyone who follows niche advocacy: it was well-respected in the field but mostly unseen outside of it. The organization, which was a part of the 1948-founded World Organization for Early Childhood Education, had created a genuinely thoughtful framework for teaching children under the age of eight about sustainability. It featured a self-audit tool created in ten different countries, an award program, and academic support. It lacked reach, though. When Nursery World became involved, that gradually but noticeably changed.
Nursery World is the top trade magazine for early childhood professionals in the UK. It is distributed during lunch breaks at nurseries from South Kensington to Sheffield and is kept in staff rooms. The media isn’t glamorous. However, it’s the publication that is actually read in a field where practitioners are frequently too preoccupied with changing diapers and managing ratios to attend academic conferences. No journal article or UNESCO citation could do what Nursery World did when it started sponsoring and showcasing OMEP UK’s annual Sustainability in the Early Years conferences, which are usually held in central London: it put the work in front of the people doing the work.
There was no press release or spectacular launch for the partnership. It developed naturally, based on a mutual understanding that sustainability in early childhood settings was being viewed as an add-on activity rather than a true curriculum philosophy. A structured alternative was provided by OMEP UK’s Early Childhood Education for Sustainable Citizenship Award, which was created in partnership with Montessori Europe between 2010 and 2014. The program, which covers the three pillars of environmental, social, and economic sustainability, provides children with real passports with visa stickers that track their sustainability journey. Practitioners are drawn to this type of concrete, child-centered design, and Nursery World provided consistent, thorough coverage that reached thousands of settings.
This type of collaboration seems to be more important than it first seems. In the UK, early childhood education is under tremendous strain due to limited funding, a lack of personnel, and strict regulations that don’t allow for much creativity. Nursery managers and owners know that sustainability is a serious issue when a reputable trade publication devotes features, webinars, and conference slots to it. Professional development is what it is. Ofsted may take notice of it. The time is worthwhile.
Dr. Diane Boyd, a multi-award-winning OMEP researcher whose work on place-based sustainability has helped practitioners understand how local ecosystems and everyday routines can become the curriculum rather than something added to it, has been one of the speakers at the conferences. By forming alliances with social enterprises like BikeWorks, which has donated nearly 500 cycles to London nurseries, and Green Bottoms, a diaper recycling company that diverts hundreds of tonnes of waste from landfills every year, organizations like the London Early Years Foundation have advanced these ideas. These are not impersonal sustainability objectives. These are actual bikes, diapers, and nurseries.
The difference between what governments are doing at the policy level and what OMEP UK is doing at the practitioner level is difficult to ignore. Although the Department of Education has released guidelines on Climate Action Plans for educational environments, there is still a lack of structural support and actual funding. Membership fees for OMEP UK’s award scheme are approximately £35 annually, and at the Bronze level, each child’s passport costs approximately £5. These are modest figures that show an organization that is aware of the economics of a market with very thin margins.
It remains to be seen if the Nursery World collaboration will serve as a template for other advocacy groups attempting to emerge from academic obscurity. However, the reasoning is straightforward and, looking back, clear: you must meet practitioners where they are if you wish to change practice. Nursery World’s print and digital pages serve as that location for tens of thousands of early childhood educators in Britain. OMEP UK discovered this, and the outcome is a sustainability movement in British preschools that feels less like a campaign and more like a gradual change in the way the industry views children’s rights.
