Making a Difference Together: Dulwich Launches Second ESG Report

Last week, Dulwich College Shanghai Puxi students and staff attended the launch event for the Dulwich College International and Education in Motion (EiM) 2021-2022 Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Report. We are proud to share the strong commitment to sustainability and global citizenship that is a key feature of our family of schools. The ESG report showcases our shared dedication to pioneering an education that aspires towards a sustainable future, and making a positive impact on both people and the planet.

Our ESG Report reflects our ongoing efforts to engage students and staff in understanding the impact of their actions and supporting them in taking purposeful steps towards positive global change. The report covers initiatives and progress indicators from across six Dulwich College International schools, two Dulwich International High Schools, three Dehong International Chinese Schools, Green School Bali, and EiM head offices in Singapore and Shanghai. It demonstrates how EiM's ESG framework is instrumental in aligning individual, school, and collective contributions towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

At Dulwich College Shanghai Puxi, we are proud to embrace EiM's four focus areas—Learning, Planet (Environmental), People (Social), and Policy (Governance)—and integrate them into our daily operations and curriculum. By fostering a culture of sustainability and global citizenship, we inspire our students to become responsible global leaders, equipped with the knowledge and passion to make a lasting positive impact on the world: to Live Worldwise.

What is ESG?

ESG stands for Environmental, Social, and Governance Reporting and is an approach that evaluates the extent to which an organisation works on behalf of goals within environmental, social, and governance areas. The ESG report follows the Global Reporting Initiative Standards (GRI) issued by the Global Sustainability Standards Board. We have created four focus areas under our sustainability ESG approach: - Learning, Planet (E), People (S) and Policy (G), setting out initiatives and progress indicators at a group and school level.

Key Highlights from EiM's ESG Report
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Our second ESG report lays out in detail our priorities for the 2021/22 academic year, organised under Learning, Planet, People, and Policy, the four ESG pillars that provide the lens through which we focus our sustainable goals, progress indicators, and outcomes.

Learning

We are committed to meaningful and relevant learning that nurtures students as global citizens.

Sam Clarke
Primary Global Citizenship Champion, 
Year 5 Teacher，
Dulwich College Shanghai Puxi

Ellah Pabito
Early Years Global Citizenship Champion, 
Year 1 Teacher
Dulwich College Shanghai Puxi

"Providing opportunities for our students to learn about the world around them, engage with global issues and take action within their communities underpins our culture at Dulwich College Shanghai Puxi. Our College values of ‘Aim High Together, Work Hard Together, Be Kind and Respectful Together and Make a Difference Together’ help our students to understand the importance of global citizenship, their future roles in the world and how they can inspire positive change. Working together on such reports allows community stakeholders: students, parents, and staff, to work together to create targets for our upcoming academic year, which further helps focus our efforts towards creating an even more sustainable learning community, underpinned by our global citizenship competencies."

At Dulwich, we turn learning into Living Worldwise. In fulfilling our commitment to meaningful and relevant learning that nurtures students as global citizens, we have doubled down on Learning as one of our ESG focuses in four major areas: educating the whole child, embedding sustainability and global citizenship, education technology and pedagogy, and community experiences.

We have created a five-year education strategy that highlights ten goals spanning all aspects of a holistic education for our family of schools. We introduce and leverage tools including Global Citizenship Competencies and School Progress Indicators in everyday aspects of school life and learning to advance sustainability education. We continue to innovate our educational technologies and teaching methods to enrich learning experiences and have made significant progress in groupwide programmes including D3, Pioneering Spirit Grant, and CreaTech. We have enhanced students’ connection to local and global communities by introducing learning programmes such as Ignite: Switzerland and Worldwise Events.

Planet

We are committed to taking concrete actions to reduce our environmental footprint and raise people’s awareness of living in harmony with the planet.

Alan Williams
Director of Business Administration (DBA),
Dulwich College Suzhou and Dulwich International High School Suzhou

"At Dulwich College Suzhou and Dulwich International High School Suzhou, the Carbon Roadmap programme helped us identify where our schools produce carbon emissions. COVID travel restrictions limited our ability to invite experts to campus to explore larger emission reduction projects, so we began by selecting UN-approved offset optionsthat provide Carbon Neutral Certificates. We look forward to establishing carbon emissions targets and working with our community to develop emissions reduction strategies. Currently, we are piloting a project to reduce power usage (underground carpark lighting) with the assistance of smart technologies. The initial data from this project is extremely positive, and we plan to implement this smart technology solution further across both schools to reduce our emissions in the future."

This report highlights the concrete actions we have taken to reduce our environmental footprint and raise people’s awareness of living in harmony with the planet in six particular areas: carbon, energy and water, waste, food, campus, and supply chain.

Six Dulwich College International schools and two Dulwich International High Schools have completed greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting for Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, which allows for efficient comparisons and highlights opportunities for our schools to take further carbon reduction actions. We are standardising our energy and water management policies and adopting the E-sign system to cut paper use and reduce waste. We are encouraging healthy and sustainable food choices across our schools and reducing food waste. By the end of 2021/22, two Dulwich schools had achieved green building certifications issued by recognised international institutions, with more schools expected to join the list in the coming years. We are adopting sustainable initiatives in the supply chain, such as purchasing uniforms that are ethical and have components of recycled fabric materials.

People

We are committed to building a diverse, inclusive, and supportive community that grows together with us.

Lucien Giordano
Group Director of International Outreach and Alumni Engagement, EiM

"The WAN strategic plan is set on leveraging the immense will for volunteerism and philanthropic giving that is present and growing in our alumni community. Our 10,000-plus alumni want to continue making a positive impact in the world."

Through our Professional Learning and Development Policy, we continue to provide a variety of high-quality, blended professional learning opportunities for our staff.We are strengthening our holistic approach to health and wellbeing by setting up a Wellbeing Strategic Working Group and developing a framework and audit tool for sharing best practises and continual improvement. We strive to create stronger community connections through platforms and programmes that engage students, staff, parents, alumni, and the wider community.

Policy

We are committed to improving and building strong organisational structures and systems.

Fraser White
Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer, EiM

"Safeguarding is not just a policy for us. It is a culture and a highly visual, integral part of our schools. We often say that ‘safeguarding is not what we do; it’s who we are! It has taken consistent effort for us to get to a place where everyone knows they have a role to play in keeping our students safe, and this approach is essential if we are to honour our commitment to ‘students come first’."

It is important to model the behaviour that we want our students to adopt. That is why we are making it a priority to build ESG frameworks into our operations. In 2021/22, we continued to optimise our ESG governance structure to enhance accountability and implementation of our ESG agenda. We took proactive actions to protect the mental health of our community during COVID. Our comprehensive safeguarding framework ensures that safeguarding and child protection are at the forefront and the responsibility of everyone who works with children. We adopted a proactive approach to cybersecurity and data protection by consistently enhancing policies, procedures, training, and system architecture.