Generation H2O Education Programme Reaches 100K Young Water Champions

“There is a quiet but profound revolution taking place in our classrooms in terms of how young people think about our country’s water”

Alex Plant
Chief Executive, Scottish Water

A new generation of water savvy school pupils can help change the way Scotland looks after its most precious natural resource – the water which flows from our taps. 

Scottish Water’s Generation H2O programme, launched three years ago, has now reached more than 100,000 pupils right across the country, from cities to islands, in more than 1000 schools.
 
Teachers at schools in urban and rural communities have downloaded lesson content on how to care for our water, which has reached a total of 112,000 students of all ages. 

Now the programme aims to be delivered in half of the country’s schools by next year, with appetite for the lessons growing every month. 

Alex Plant, Scottish Water Chief Executive, who helped deliver a lesson to schoolchildren in Dundee last year alongside Deirdre Michie, the Chair of Scottish Water’s Board, said: “There is a quiet but profound revolution taking place in our classrooms in terms of how young people think about our country’s water. They increasingly recognise it as a very precious natural resource and, growing up in an era when the environment we depend on is under extreme pressure from a changed climate, realise that we need to look after it carefully. 

“We are excited to see so many teachers downloading the content to engage their pupils on how to be brilliant custodians of our nation’s water – not just now but well into the years ahead.

“The fact that these lessons are being delivered and enjoyed in schools in our biggest cities and our smallest island communities indicates a growing understanding that we can all make a difference.” 

A total of 1550 teachers in 1082 schools are registered for Generation H2O. 

The largest school to join the wave is Holyrood Secondary in Glasgow, with more than 2280 pupils. The smallest is Crawford Primary in Biggar with just 10 students. 

Blackness Primary in Dundee delivered water lessons to every single pupil (340 in total) while the school on the island of Gigha took seven of its 10 pupils through the lesson; they even got to visit the local water treatment works serving the almost 200 residents of the Inner Hebridean island.
 
17% of all schools registered, with every local authority area represented, sit within deprived areas in Scotland.