We recently invited students to complete a short survey exploring their views on environmental action and found that students are not only ready for change but expect and support environmental action from their language schools.

Encouragingly, almost all respondents (97.9%) said they would support new environmental policies at their school. Our findings indicate that students would like to see language schools make greater efforts to improve their environmental impact and that schools will receive a positive response to environmental initiatives. What's more, schools will be connecting to student values through this work.

The vast majority of respondents (85.5%) from our three pilot schools said that everyone should do their best to protect the environment. This shows widespread approval for environmental action and echoes research undertaken in the Higher Education sector in 2025, which found 88% of prospective students rate sustainability as moderately, very or extremely important. For the minority who are not yet convinced that they can make a meaningful difference, there is an opportunity for schools to empower their students with a sense of agency and an understanding of how we all impact and shape our world.

In this initial pilot, our green student survey was distributed to students at three Green Standard Schools members based in three different countries. The questions covered both individual behaviour and how students feel their language school is responding to today’s environmental challenges.

The results have been been interesting and we look forward to opening the research to respondents from more language school around the world in future. We believe insights into language student attitudes on environmental topics is essential to educators seeking to respond to student interests and values, and schools that want to stay topical and build trust with their learners.

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