What is GreenComp?
GATE for Teachers
What is GreenComp?
The GreenComp framework defines what it means to be competent in sustainability. It supports you as a teacher, educator, or school staff member in preparing learners to think, act, and live sustainably, while also developing your own professional practice.
A well-developed overall competence in sustainable action enables you to design and support learning experiences that restore and maintain the health of ecosystems. Building on this, you help lay the foundation for long-term social and cultural justice. This, in turn, supports a sustainable and stable future, including how we live, work, and organise our communities and economies.
GreenComp is structured around four interrelated areas, each with three competences, resulting in a total of twelve key sustainability competences. Each competence includes three components:
Attitudes
fostering care, responsibility, fairness, and long-term thinking
Knowledge
understanding systems, challenges, and opportunities for sustainability
Skills
designing, facilitating, and modelling effective action and change
These three dimensions, attitudes, knowledge, and skills, must work together in practice. Sustainability is not a separate subject. It is embedded across the curriculum, modelled through everyday behaviour, and strengthened through collaboration and school culture.
You demonstrate competence in a given area when you are both willing and able to act consciously and responsibly in support of sustainability within your teaching, learning, and professional engagement.
About the recommendations in this tool
The examples of good practice presented in the recommendations of this self-assessment are drawn from previous research conducted within the GATE project. They are based on European case studies and focus group findings that explored how schools are already embedding sustainability in meaningful and effective ways.
If you would like to gain a deeper understanding of the broader conceptual and strategic foundations behind this work, we encourage you to consult the GATE Framework Guidelines. The Guidelines are designed to support educators, school leaders, and policymakers in integrating sustainability competences into secondary education, providing a shared orientation and evidence-based starting point for action.
You can access the GATE Framework Guidelines here: