Air Quality campaigns for schools

We encourage schools and school children to take action to help reduce air pollution within our borough.

• Ask About Asthma campaign
• Clean Air Day
• Nation-wide and local initiatives

Clean Air Day

Clean Air Day is the UK’s largest air pollution campaign. It aims to inspire everyone to take action to help reduce air pollution and usually involves hundreds of events around the country including many in our borough.

Clean Air Day - Thursday 15 June 2023

This year's theme was ‘Clean up our air to look after your mind this #CleanAirDay'. The campaign focused on the fact that cleaning up our air is good for us in many ways as it not only benefits our physical health and the environment but can also protect our mental and brain health. 

See how air pollution impacts every organ in the body (pdf, 423 KB).

We encourage all schools to take part by organising activities for individual year groups or for the whole school throughout the week of Clean Air Day and at any other time. here are lots of free resources from the coordinator of the campaign, which will help you to plan things to do.

Why not:

• Run a lesson or assembly (downloads as a zipped file) or learning sessions (downloads as a zipped file)
• Plan activities to support walking, cycling and scooting to school (from STARS)
• Do some citizen science including to organise a lichen observation activity (pdf, 166 KB)
• Hold a Air pollution quiz (pdf, 200 KB)
• Become clean air detectives
• Make your own low pollution map to raise awareness of how to reduce personal exposure
• Get free information about air pollution and ow to tackle it from the London Schools' Pollution Helpdesk
• Enter the Mayor of London's poster competition (details provided via the Schools’ weekly eNewsletter)

Use the resources to help spread the word to parents, carers, and the school community through social media and a newsletter article.

You could:

• Raise their awareness about air pollution (pdf, 108 KB)
• Advertise the low pollution route finder to help to reduce exposure whilst walking and cycling to school
• Encourage your community to make a pledge (pdf, 116 KB) to create cleaner air for your school

We are also offering schools, especially those in areas with higher air pollution, the opportunity to participate in an air quality monitoring project. Please contact our Council Air Quality Officer if you are school staff but have not seen the details in the School’s eNewsletter and your school is interested in getting involved.

Find out more information about what is being done in the borough for Clean Air Day.

Ask About Asthma campaign

The Ask About Asthma campaign will run from Monday 11 to Sunday 17 September 2023. The campaign aims to raise awareness about children and young people's asthma, increase understanding that air pollution can trigger attacks, and to improve young people's asthma care. 

Campaign aims

The campaign encourages children and young people, their families, and those involved in their care, to ensure four simple and effective measures to help them control their asthma:

1. Get an asthma action plan in place
2. Understand how to use inhalers correctly
3. Schedule an asthma review – every year and after every attack
4.  Consider air pollution as an asthma trigger

Each day there are new webinars, podcasts, videos and blogs about different topics – all are free and details are given in the online schedule. There is also a free online conference on Thursday 14 September which you can sign up for.

Free downloadable resources from the organisers include toolkits for schools and youth groups, and presentations for schools to run a lesson and/or assembly.

There are lots of other free resources available which may be of interest, including:

• Asthma facts sheet
• Asthma UK’s asthma action plan for children and air pollution and asthma webpage
• Short videos about asthma care
  

This year’s campaign theme “Widening our view” aims to shine a light on the wider factors of children and young people’s asthma care including housing, mould and vaping. You can read more information on damp, mould and condensation in private housing, the effects of vaping for young people, and air pollution as an asthma trigger.

Nation-wide and local initiatives

There are various activities and campaigns for schools that we promote which include:

• Walking initiatives
• Cycling initiatives
• Scooter training (for year 2 children)
• Smarter driving initiatives to promote cleaner air around schools

Our schools travel planning page helps schools promote active travel by participating in cycling and walking campaigns and producing a travel plan.

View Schools’ air quality for more information about current and recent projects for schools.