The First Subject That Is Purely About Sustainability
At Berlage Lyceum in Amsterdam, an enthusiastic teacher had an idea: what if a secondary school introduced a subject that was entirely dedicated to sustainability — not as a thread woven through existing courses, but as a standalone subject in its own right? Inspired by Radboud University in Nijmegen, which had begun teaching all its students about sustainability, the teacher pitched the idea to the school board, received support, and piloted it with two classes of third-year VWO students (the highest pre-university track) in its first year, reaching 60 students.
The subject is taught one hour per week for a full school year. It is neither a course of knowledge transfer nor a politically biased programme: its educational method is built around student agency. Under guidance, students learn to tackle substantial, real-world sustainability assignments — and they are given genuine responsibility for finding solutions themselves. The subject is explicitly designed to feel relevant: “ultimately it is their world that they will inherit,” as the programme description puts it.
Working With Real Partners
To give the course substance and credibility, the school has established contacts with external organisations — foundations and companies — that pose genuine sustainability challenges for students to work on in teams. The teacher’s role includes maintaining these external partnerships and educating the organisations on how to work productively with young people. The combination of playful activities that create engagement (the “fun” dimension) with real problems that carry actual consequence (the “useful” dimension) is identified as the key success factor: students feel they are contributing something of value, not just completing an exercise.
Scaling and Institutional Challenge
The programme’s main vulnerability is that it was developed by a single enthusiastic teacher. For it to be truly sustainable within the school, other teachers will need to embrace the idea and contribute to the module from their own disciplinary knowledge. More teachers need to teach the subject — a structural challenge that many innovative educational initiatives face when moving from pilot to permanent programme.
Relevance for Sustainable Learning
Berlage Lyceum’s sustainability subject is a practical example of how non-formal learning methods — student agency, real-world challenges, external partnerships — can be embedded within a formal secondary school curriculum. It connects to SDG 13 (Climate Action) and SDG 4 (Quality Education).
Website: academievoorduurzaamonderwijs.nl
Contact: Felix Spee – unesco@berlagelyceum.eu
