Acknowledgement of Country

At the NSW Department of Education, we recognise the Traditional Custodians of the lands and waterways where we study, work and live.

We celebrate the First Peoples’ unique cultural and spiritual relationship to Country and value Aboriginal wisdom in caring for Country.

We recognise our responsibility

Our vision is to be Australia’s best education system and one of the finest in the world. We strive to deliver quality education outcomes while protecting the environment, contributing to economic prosperity and helping our communities to thrive. The world is changing rapidly.

We are seeing the effects of climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, global health challenges and social conflict around us. Thus, sustainability is a broader concept than resource conservation and environmental protection.

As illustrated by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs), it also encompasses health and wellbeing, equity and resilience. We will demonstrate leadership in all areas of sustainability by:

• equipping our students and staff with the perspective, knowledge and skills for the future
• changing our own practices, to ensure we have a positive impact wherever possible
• showing others how we are changing our practices, to encourage them to do the same.

Our plan for action

Adopting more sustainable practices is one of the great challenges of our time. We know high expectations in the classroom drive academic results, so we have high expectations for ourselves to deliver on this commitment.

We have many live examples of sustainable practices already. As a learning community, we will use these examples to inspire, inform and accelerate positive change.

Our leaders will oversee the delivery of our commitment to sustainability. We will establish a baseline to measure our progress against and we commit to:

• report on our progress
• continue to improve the quality of our data
• refine metrics to best measure our outcomes and impact.

We all must play an active role in supporting the delivery of our sustainability commitment.

Let’s embrace the opportunity to shape a positive legacy for our students and future generations.