Lithuanian schools in Lithuania join Sustainable School 2030; 800 schools across 59 of 60 municipalities

From learning about sustainability to learning to act: how Lithuania is building a culture of sustainability through schools

We can teach young people about climate change, biodiversity, responsible consumption and sustainable development. But knowledge alone does not change the institutions and communities in which people live. For that, people need opportunities to understand their own context, identify what can change, take responsibility and act together.

This is the idea behind Sustainable School 2030 (Tvari mokykla 2030) , a national agenda coordinated by the Lithuanian Non-Formal Education Agency (LINEŠA). Launched in 2024, the agenda was created to bring together sustainability efforts in Lithuanian education, improve coordination and establish a coherent, system-wide approach to sustainable development. Two years later, around 800 schools from 59 out of 60 municipalities have voluntarily joined the initiative - almost halfway towards the ambition of involving every Lithuanian school by 2030.

The scale is significant. But the more important story is what happens underneath that number: how a national framework can help individual schools understand their own situation, develop their own solutions, learn from one another and gradually make sustainability part of how their institutions work.

A school starts by looking at itself

A school joining Sustainable School 2030 does not receive a universal recipe for becoming sustainable. Instead, it starts with a question that is both simple and difficult: where are we now?

The Sustainable School Self-Evaluation Guide gives schools a structured way to answer it. Across 177 indicators and eight areas of sustainability, schools examine aspects of everyday institutional life ranging from resource conservation, mobility, health and safety to community engagement, public spaces, environmental impact and cultural and natural heritage. This broad understanding is intentional. Sustainability is not reduced to recycling bins or energy-saving campaigns, it also concerns how people participate, how spaces are used, how a school relates to its surroundings and how the institution responds to the needs of its community.

The self-evaluation therefore becomes more than an administrative exercise. It gives a school a common language for discussing sustainability and helps its community identify both existing strengths and areas where change is needed. A school can see where it already has strong practices, where there are gaps and which changes are realistic and meaningful in its own context.

That is an important shift from simply learning about sustainability to learning how to act on it .

A national framework, but local solutions

Although the agenda is national in scope, its implementation is deliberately rooted in local communities. Each participating school works with a municipal coordinator, creating a bridge between the national framework and the schools in that municipality. LINEŠA prepares, trains and continuously supports these coordinators, provides methodological guidance and maintains a professional network through which they can exchange experience and receive advice.

This local layer is essential because the challenges facing schools are not identical. A school in an urban area may prioritise sustainable mobility and public spaces, while another may focus on biodiversity, food waste, cultural heritage or community participation. Some schools may already have years of experience with sustainability while others may be taking their first steps.

The agenda therefore does not try to make every school look the same. Instead, it provides a shared framework within which each community can decide what sustainability means in its own context and what it is ready to change. Schools define their own pace and develop their roadmap according to their resources, existing competencies and level of community engagement.

In this sense, the national and local levels have complementary roles: the national level provides the framework and support, while local communities determine what change looks like in practice.

This approach also makes the agenda more accessible. A school does not have to be perfect to participate, nor does it have to transform itself in a single year. Sustainable institutional change is understood as a process that can develop over time.

From reflection to evidence of change

The agenda combines self-assessment with a three-level recognition system represented by the Sustainability Lingonberry . The first level relies on the self-evaluation process carried out with the involvement of municipal coordinators. Schools seeking the second and third levels undergo a more detailed assessment involving LINEŠA specialists and in-person visits, where their progress and evidence of implementation can be discussed directly with the school community.

The purpose of the process is not simply to verify whether a school has completed a list of activities. It is to recognise meaningful progress and encourage schools to continue developing. The latest assessment data show that 65 schools have reached the third, highest level and 220 have reached the second level.

This gradual model matters. A sustainable institution is not created through a one-off campaign, and a school should not be rewarded simply for doing the largest number of things in the shortest possible time. The agenda allows communities to begin from different starting points and progress at a pace that makes lasting change possible.

To support them along the way, LINEŠA provides professional development seminars, expert consultations, methodological resources and opportunities for international learning and mobility. The assessment process, therefore, is connected to learning and capacity-building rather than functioning as a standalone certification system.

The cycle is continuous: schools assess where they are, identify priorities, take action, learn from the experience and continue improving.

The most valuable knowledge does not always come from experts

One of the most important features of Sustainable School 2030 is that knowledge does not move only from the national level down to schools. It also moves horizontally, between schools and communities.

LINEŠA collects and shares good practices through the Sustainable Schools Toolbox, conferences, seminars and other learning opportunities. Schools can therefore learn not only from experts, but from other schools facing similar challenges. A solution developed in one locality can become an idea for another, while local experience can feed back into the wider national community.

The annual Sustainable School Awards make this exchange particularly visible. In 2025, around 300 projects were considered, with 24 finalists selected across nine sustainability areas. The recognised projects demonstrated that institutional sustainability can take many forms: from sustainable mobility and biodiversity to community participation, learning environments, food waste, cultural heritage and connections with local places.

One of the recognised initiatives addressed food waste through changes in school catering practices. The approach was later adopted by a partner school, where food waste was reduced threefold within a month. Another project grew from students’ involvement in a young engineers’ competition and developed into a wider sustainability initiative. These examples matter not because they provide a recipe that every school should copy, but because they show how a local idea can become a practical learning resource for others.

The Awards also turn recognition into participation. The 2025 Sustainability Community Favourite was selected through public voting, with almost 8 000 votes cast. In this way, sustainability practices are not only evaluated by institutions; they are brought into the public space, discussed, celebrated and shared with a wider community.

What emerges is a growing feedback loop: local action creates knowledge, shared knowledge inspires new action, and new experiences strengthen the collective knowledge of the network.

Students are ultimately the people education systems exist to serve, and they are the generation that will live longest with the consequences of today’s decisions. Sustainable School 2030 therefore seeks to create learning environments in which sustainability can be experienced as part of everyday institutional life.

At the same time, the agenda does not prescribe one model of student participation. Its main implementation structure works with school leaders, education professionals and municipal coordinators, while schools are encouraged to involve learners and their wider communities according to their own context and readiness. As a result, the degree of direct student decision-making varies between schools. In some communities, students take an active role in developing solutions through initiatives like participatory budgeting, shaping spaces or organising sustainability activities, in others, institutional change may initially be led more strongly by teachers, school leaders or community partners.

What the agenda does is create the conditions in which that participation can become meaningful. A student who helps rethink a school space gains first-hand experience of how decisions are made and how collective choices shape their environment. When a school community changes the way it manages food, it has to consider priorities, make choices and take responsibility for their consequences. When municipalities connect schools around sustainability, they strengthen the local capacity to work collectively towards the green transition.

This is where sustainability education becomes citizenship education. It connects knowledge with responsibility and responsibility with action.

The approach also resonates strongly with the European GreenComp framework, particularly its competences around problem framing, political agency, collective action and individual initiative. These competences recognise that sustainability requires more than understanding environmental challenges: people need to be able to interpret problems, participate in decisions and work with others to create change.

Sustainable School 2030 brings these ideas into the everyday institutional environment where young people spend a significant part of their lives.

Building capacity that lasts beyond one project

The agenda’s impact therefore extends beyond the individual activities carried out by participating schools. Its deeper contribution is the infrastructure it is creating around them.

A common framework makes sustainability visible and gives schools a way to understand their starting point. Municipal coordinators create local capacity and keep the process connected to the realities of individual communities. LINEŠA supports this process on a national level through methodology, expertise, professional development, consultation and opportunities for exchange, helping schools move from identifying challenges to developing and strengthening their own solutions. The Toolbox, conferences, seminars and Awards extend this learning beyond individual schools, allowing experiences to circulate across the network and giving communities opportunities to see, discuss and build on what others have done.

Together, these elements make sustainability less dependent on whether one enthusiastic teacher happens to initiate a project. They create structures through which knowledge, responsibility and action can continue to develop even as people and circumstances change.

This is particularly important when thinking about intergenerational fairness. Future generations will inherit not only the environmental consequences of today’s decisions, but also the institutions, pu