Why ITT and ITE providers should help trainees understand climate change as a safeguarding context, not just curriculum content
Kit Marie Rackley – Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and NASBTT Secondary Geography Consultant
Initial Teacher Training providers are preparing the next generation of teachers for classrooms that are already being changed by climate change.
We know that’s not rhetoric as it is increasingly visible in overheated classrooms, disrupted attendance after flooding, poor air quality, drought and water disruption, climate-related distress, online misinformation, and the unequal impact of these risks on pupils with existing vulnerabilities.
The Department for Education’s list of accredited ITT providers confirms the breadth of organisations involved in preparing teachers to achieve QTS from September 2026 onwards. This makes climate-literate safeguarding relevant across school-based, university-led and partnership routes into teaching.
Although ITT programmes are already crowded, we need to help trainees make better sense of something they will increasingly encounter in schools: climate change not only as subject knowledge, but as a context that can affect pupils’ welfare, attendance, behaviour, health, access to learning and sense of the future.
KCSIE 2026 still has a climate blind spot
Every year, schools update staff on Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE). KCSIE 2026 was published on 7 July 2026, ahead of coming into force from 1 September 2026. It remains statutory guidance that schools and colleges must have regard to when carrying out their duties to safeguard and promote the welfare of children.
There are important strengths in the guidance. KCSIE continues to focus on mental health, online safety, information sharing, children potentially at greater risk, absence from education, whole-school safeguarding and the role of staff in recognising concerns. But climate change is still absent.
That absence creates a tension because the DfE already knows climate risk affects education. Its own review of climate risk to education delivery identifies overheating, flooding and water scarcity as key risks likely to affect schools and colleges. Carbon Brief reported in 2024 that English schools could exceed an indoor “overheating” threshold of 26°C for more than a third of the academic year under 2°C of warming, rising to half the year under 4°C of warming.
Meanwhile, recent reporting describes pupils and staff struggling in classrooms above 40°C, with accounts of nausea, fainting, headaches, heatstroke, deteriorating attention and behaviour, and learning on the hottest days reduced to “just surviving.”
ITT and ITE providers do not need to wait for KCSIE to catch up before helping trainees understand the safeguarding relevance of these conditions.
Climate risk is not a new safeguarding category
Climate change should not be presented to trainees as a crude new safeguarding label. A heatwave is not automatically a safeguarding concern. A flood is not automatically a safeguarding concern. A drought warning is not automatically a safeguarding concern. A pupil expressing climate worry is not automatically a safeguarding concern.
But any of these can become relevant when they affect a child’s welfare, attendance, behaviour, safety, access to learning, home circumstances, visibility, or mental and physical health.
Climate risks are not always safeguarding concerns in themselves. They are safeguarding amplifiers.
They can intensify existing vulnerabilities around poverty, insecure housing, medical needs, SEND, caring responsibilities, family stress, transport disruption, poor mental health, absence from education, online misinformation and unequal access to safe outdoor space.
That is why this belongs in teacher education. Trainees do not need to become climate scientists. They do need to learn that context matters. They need to recognise that behaviour may sometimes be physiological, that attendance issues may have environmental causes, that distress about the future may need careful pastoral response, and that pupils do not experience climate-related disruption equally.
What this means for trainee teachers
A climate-literate trainee teacher is not expected to solve climate change. Nor should they be made responsible for safeguarding decisions beyond their role. But they should be supported to notice when climate-shaped conditions may be relevant to pupil welfare and to follow the right school procedures.
For example, during a heat-health alert, the question is not simply: should school close?
A trainee might need to notice:
- Which pupils are more vulnerable in hot weather?
- Which classrooms are uncomfortable or unsafe?
- Could behaviour, fatigue or irritability be linked to heat stress?
- Does a pupil have asthma, a medical condition, SEND or sensory needs?
- Might a pupil be less safe, less supervised or less cool at home than in school?
- Who should the trainee speak to if concerned?
UKHSA guidance is clear that children can be at risk in hot weather because of their physiology, behaviour and activity levels. Heat stress may show as discomfort or irritability, while heat exhaustion can include tiredness, dizziness, headache, nausea, vomiting and excessive sweating. DfE advice also recognises that schools can often help protect children during hot weather through hydration, monitoring and practical adjustments, and that children may not be cooler at home.
The same kind of professional curiosity applies to flooding. If a usually punctual pupil misses several days after local flooding and later arrives with damp shoes, no PE kit and visible distress when asked about homework, a climate-literate response does not jump straight to blame. It asks what may have happened around that child: affected housing, lost belongings, disrupted transport, family stress, embarrassment, displacement, or reduced access to support.
Water scarcity raises another set of questions. If drought or water disruption affects toilets, drinking water, hygiene, food preparation, medical needs, menstruation or intimate care, that is not just an estates issue. It can affect welfare, dignity and access to learning. The Environment Agency is already publishing 2026 drought and dry-weather reports for England.
Climate-related distress also matters. A pupil who says they feel guilty every time they use electricity or eat meat is not automatically a safeguarding concern. But if worry affects sleep, attendance, concentration, self-care, social participation or safety, staff should use the pastoral and safeguarding routes they already know. KCSIE is clear that mental health problems can, in some cases, develop into safeguarding concerns, while education staff should not attempt to diagnose.
A useful sentence for trainees to learn might be:
“You are not responsible for solving this on your own.”
That phrase matters. It reduces misplaced responsibility and helps pupils locate concern within collective support rather than individual guilt.
Why this belongs in ITT and ITE
Teacher education already helps trainees understand safeguarding, professional responsibilities, behaviour, adaptive teaching, mental health, inclusion, curriculum and school systems. Climate-literate safeguarding does not sit outside those areas. It cuts across them.
For ITT and ITE providers, the opportunity is to make careful, proportionate links rather than adding a large new module.
Climate-literate safeguarding could sit within:
- safeguarding training
- professional behaviours and responsibilities
- behaviour and relationships
- adaptive teaching and SEND
- mental health and wellbeing
- attendance and inclusion
- curriculum and subject knowledge
- outdoor learning and educational visits
- digital literacy and misinformation
- school-based training and mentor conversations
The point is not for every trainee teacher to deliver climate education in every subject. The point is for every trainee teacher to understand that pupils learn within contexts, and that climate change is increasingly one of those contexts.
This is particularly relevant for school-based teacher training. Trainees are immersed in the realities of school life: hot classrooms, playgrounds, trips, attendance procedures, pastoral conversations, safeguarding updates, staff briefings and unexpected disruption. NASBTT members are well placed to help trainees connect theory, statutory responsibility and school practice.
A practical resource for providers
To support this, I have created a Climate-Literate Safeguarding resource suite designed for schools, DSLs, training providers and school leaders preparing for KCSIE 2026.
The suite includes:
- a short slide annex
- a DSL / training provider guidance document
- a concise staff handout
- scenario prompts covering heat, flooding, water scarcity, climate distress, misinformation, community disruption and wildfire smoke
The resource is designed to sit inside statutory KCSIE 2026 safeguarding training, not replace it. It can also be adapted for ITT provider sessions, mentor development, trainee safeguarding refreshers or school-based professional studies sessions.
For ITT and ITE providers, the resource may be useful in three ways:
- As a trainee discussion activity
Use one or two scenarios to help trainees practise professional curiosity. - As mentor development
Help mentors discuss climate-shaped contexts with trainees during placement. - As provider curriculum reflection
Review where climate-related welfare, attendance, behaviour, SEND and mental health contexts already appear in the programme, and where they may be made more explicit.
The practical staff model is deliberately simple:
- Notice the context.
- Respond proportionately.
- Record factually.
- Refer if concerned.
- Review patterns.
That is not an extra burden. It is safeguarding applied with context.
Preparing teachers for the classrooms they are entering
Climate change is no longer only something pupils learn about. It is increasingly part of the conditions in which they learn. That has implications for schools, but it also has implications for teacher education.
If we prepare new teachers to understand safeguarding only as a set of discrete categories, we risk missing the contexts that shape children’s lives. If we prepare them to notice context, vulnerability and unequal exposure, we help them become safer, more thoughtful and more professionally grounded practitioners.
The guidance may not name climate change. But ITT and ITE providers can still help future teachers recognise when climate is changing the safeguarding context.
And the next generation of teachers should not have to enter classrooms shaped by heat, flooding, disruption, misinformation and climate distress without the language or confidence to respond proportionately.