Darwin - a “massive” African tortoise - has free rein to go where he likes on the campus of Arbor School in Dubai. For the most part, his plodding presence just adds to the “very calm environment”, says principal Gemma Thornley. Sometimes, though, it can cause a stir.

Thornley remembers a delay to a football fixture just after she arrived in August 2024 because Darwin had strayed onto the pitch.

She says: “I ran down to the astroturf and they were there lifting this huge African tortoise - it takes two people - onto a trolley and then wheeling him off.

“Our kids just stood there, but the opposition were clearly wondering what was going on.”

Working at Arbor - an all-through school with 1,500 pupils - can be a bit surreal at times, Thornley admits.

Environmental approach to learning

The school aims to deliver “a unique ecological and environmental approach to learning” with experimentation at its heart. To this end, it has six biodomes (think mini-Eden Project) - with two of the three large domes home to a “full tropical ecosystem” and the third operating as a classroom.

The school also has eight beehives, an industrial greenhouse and a farm. The fruit and vegetables grown on the farm are used in the meals served in the school cafeteria and to feed Darwin and the other rescue animals that call Arbor home.

Currently, other residents include two kittens called Pebbles and Ron Weasley, terrapins, tarantulas, a snake and some rabbits.

The farm also provides ingredients for food technology lessons. Kevin Jacobs, green facilities lead at Arbor, explains that hibiscus flowers are grown and used by pupils to make teas and syrups, and mustard plants are harvested to produce mustard, which pupils then put on their hot dogs.

He says: “Last year the biofarm provided 60 kilograms of produce, all of which was grown, harvested and utilised as part of our learning programmes.”

Arbor pupils are not just passive consumers of this produce - they are involved in its production.

Creating a ‘living campus’

For instance, Year 2 pupils take part in a project researching the food that Darwin the tortoise eats.

They then plant it, tend to it as it grows and have the pleasure of seeing him thrive on it.

Similarly, Thornley stresses that the other features of the campus - like the biodomes - are “not just decorations”.

“We have a living campus, so we want pupils interacting and using it,” she says. “The biodomes are timetabled, and they are used every single day.”

The same goes for the beehives. From Year 3, children have beekeeping lessons as part of the curriculum, she says.

The school is relatively young; it opened its doors in 2018. But the aim, says Thornley, is that “every lesson has some kind of link to environmental sustainability and education”, with the emphasis firmly on real-life projects and an inquiry-based approach.

At the end of the day, the hope is that the school will produce citizens who are “solutions-focused” and want to “change the world”, says Thornley.

It is a lofty goal and one set by the founders, husband and wife Saad Al Omari and Pirin Erdoğdu, from the outset. Thornley says the couple - one a palaeoclimatologist, the other an astrophysicist - came up with the concept for the school through conversations they had at Darwin Bar while studying at the University of Cambridge.

Now the school is “a genuine family school”, says Thornley: the couple’s own children attend Arbor and they themselves are on site every day. Having an eco-focus is, therefore, not about giving the school a USP, says Thornley - rather it is about a genuine desire to create citizens equipped to build a better future.

To do this, though, the focus is something most schools will recognise: “Very, very careful, meticulous planning” of the curriculum, says Thornley.

Adopting an eco-literacy curriculum

As such, while the school delivers the English national curriculum, it infuses a specially designed eco-literacy programme through all subjects being taught.

“Eco-literacy is a standalone subject in the sense that we teach it in the primary school, but it is also threaded through everything we try to do with the curriculum,” says Thornley.

The eco-literacy curriculum was designed with the help of an advisory group, which includes scientists and conservationists. On the ground, it is implemented with the help of a specially created department that works across primary and secondary called E3, or ecological and environmental education.

The department is led by assistant head Euan Riddell and staffed by six teachers, a citizen science specialist and a specialist adviser.

Thornley explains that, typically, the head of primary and the head of secondary take the lead on learning in a school, linking up to ensure progression and cohesion.

At Arbor, Riddell is the third person in the room to ensure the school does not just “hit our British curriculum standards but also our ecological and environmental standards”, she says.

Making a difference

So, in Year 2, ensuring Darwin’s supply of rich green vegetables remains topped up is not an isolated project.

Pupils at this age and stage will also, for instance, use the United Arab Emirates Encyclopaedia as their non-fiction core reading text and after they have learned about measurement, mass, temperature and shape, as well as the sustainability of a variety of materials, they will then put this knowledge into practice when they design “a sustainable building to add to Dubai’s skyline”.

“The children here see why their learning matters because they are making those real-world connections and links,” says Thornley. “We also ask them: what can they then do to make a difference?”

Thornley says the school is careful, though, to strike the right balance between teaching pupils to be environmentally conscious and not overwhelming them.

A study involving 10,000 16- to 25-year-olds, published in 2021, found 45 per cent of respondents reported their feelings about climate change negatively affected their daily lives.

Therefore, the focus at Arbor, she says, is very much on finding solutions to problems and helping pupils understand they have a voice - and how to use it.

Recently, this has, for instance, led to pupils making nest protectors for turtles and then placing them in conservation areas (under expert supervision) and monitoring their use.

Pupils are also in the process of making the campus accessible for all, including those with mobility issues.

Grassy areas and cobbled walkways outside made this difficult at times, so they were tasked with finding a solution that fitted the school’s ethos. Now they plan to use recycled bottle tops to create smooth paths.

On campus, Thornley says, the variety of green spaces and the connection to nature - as well as the presence of animals, like Darwin - actually creates a very calming and tranquil atmosphere.

Thornley jokes that if she is stressed, you will find her in a biodome “petting a terrapin”.

A global trendsetter?

Of course, schools looking to learn from Arbor are unlikely to benefit from the same level of facilities - but while Thornley concedes these spaces are a huge bonus, she also says “you don’t have to have domes to do it”.

She explains: “One thing we always say is you have got the [United Nations’] Sustainable Development Goals, and they are your on-ramp. So every school can be doing something that raises this - and threads sustainability, environmental and ecological education in, whether it be in a geography lesson in Year 8, or looking at sustainable urban architecture in maths.”

It is sound advice given that in the not-too-distant future, it seems likely that climate education and sustainability will be of increasing importance for schools.

This certainly seems set to be the case in England, where the curriculum and assessment review, published in November, found that young people had “significant appetite for further information on climate change and climate science, including their desire to support solutions”.

Although it also said that there was “minimal explicit inclusion of climate education in the national curriculum”, and this was acting as “a barrier”.

It called for the presence of climate education and sustainability to be bolstered in science and geography, and for there to be an emphasis on sustainability in the design and technology curriculum.

Therefore, while the Arbor approach might make it something of an outlier just now in terms of its intensity of focus, the climate crisis is focusing minds, and governments are beginning to set out how they expect schools to respond - although having a giant tortoise roaming around campus will, in all likelihood, remain optional.