Abstract

In the Peoples' Republic of China, a green schools programme was initiated in 1996. It has promoted both education reform and socially sustainable development. Recently, the assessment criteria for green schools have become an obstacle to the rapid development of the green school initiative, mainly due to the cultural and social system in Mainland China. Because there are many district criteria which mainly focus on green schools construction and evaluation, it is necessary to have new criteria to replace them. However, the requirements of the existing national criteria aren’t detailed, and the requirements don’t satisfy evaluation needs after the provincial criteria are replaced. Hence, the new national criteria should include a more comprehensive set of indices and requirements. This paper firstly examines the experiences from other countries and areas, and then analyses weaknesses of the existing green schools assessment process in China. Finally, some understanding about green schools, and principles to establish new national criteria in China, are discussed in the paper. Since new national criteria are being established, they will be applied to the valuation of the national green schools project in Mainland China in 2006.

Background

The development of green schools in China began in 1996. At that time, three administrations, including the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the Ministry of Education and the State Environmental Protection Administration, promulgated a document, The National Action Programme for Environmental Publicity and Education (1996–2010). The concept of green schools was included in the document as well as four indicators of green schools as shown in this statement: