Schools Programme – Bringing 'A Life On Our Planet' to the Classroom

Overview of the Schools Screening Programme

The Schools Programme is a dedicated educational initiative associated with David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet, the documentary film in which David Attenborough presents both a witness statement of global environmental change and a vision for restoring the natural world. The programme is designed to bring the film directly into school environments, enabling students at multiple year levels to engage with its themes in a structured, curriculum-adjacent format. The central ambition of the programme is to allow students to imagine their own future by creating a manifesto for change — a tangible, personalised output that connects the film's broader arguments to young people's lived experience.

The initiative sits within a wider ecosystem of public engagement resources available through attenboroughfilm.com, which also supports community screenings, creative arts engagement, and general educational outreach. The Schools Programme is positioned as the most formally structured of these offerings, with dedicated guidance for educators seeking to host a screening and facilitate follow-up activity within their institution.

Action Plan Workshops

At the heart of the Schools Programme is the Action Plan Workshop, a facilitated session designed to run in conjunction with or following a school screening of the film. The workshop invites students to move beyond passive viewing and into active response, encouraging them to articulate personal and collective commitments to environmental action. The phrase used to describe the intended output — a manifesto for change — reflects the programme's emphasis on student agency and voice rather than rote information delivery.

Schools are supported in hosting these workshops through resources made available via the site. The programme is structured so that teachers and other educators can lead sessions without requiring specialist environmental science knowledge; the film itself provides the narrative and evidential framework, while the workshop format guides students through a process of reflection, discussion, and written or creative output.

Relationship to the Broader Film and Site

The Schools Programme is one component of a larger public engagement project built around David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet. The film, described on the site as a document of how humans can shape a better future by living in balance with nature, provides the thematic foundation for all outreach activities. The site as a whole covers the film's background, its screening opportunities for both public and institutional audiences, and supplementary creative engagement routes.

The Screenings section of the site addresses public and community showings of the film more broadly, while the About section provides context on the film's production and purpose. The Creative Arts section offers a parallel route for engagement through artistic practice — a complement to the more structured Action Plan Workshop model used in the Schools Programme. Together, these sections reflect a coherent strategy of using the film as a catalyst for environmental literacy and civic engagement across different audience types.

Educational Purpose and Student Outcomes

The programme's stated educational purpose is to enable students to connect the global environmental narrative presented in the film with their own futures. By producing a manifesto — a term with deliberate civic and political resonance — students are encouraged to articulate not only what they understand about ecological challenges but what they intend to do in response. This positions the Schools Programme as an exercise in environmental citizenship as much as environmental education.

The programme is also framed in terms of community: the school is understood not only as a place of individual learning but as a node within a broader network of organisations, communities, and individuals working to restore and protect nature. This framing connects the school-level activity to the wider mission of the film and its associated campaigns.