This project explores how socioeconomic inequality shapes the way young people in Ireland make sense of climate change education. Education is a central instrument for building meaningful civic engagement with the climate crisis, and in Ireland climate education has become an increasingly prominent feature of educational reform, particularly through new subjects that emphasise active citizenship, sustainability and student agency. These developments look great on paper, suggesting an inclusive and forward-thinking approach.

But climate education is often treated as universally accessible, and international research suggests otherwise. Students from more disadvantaged backgrounds face persistent structural and material barriers to participation, and those barriers hold up even outside formal education. Access alone does not guarantee meaningful engagement. Socioeconomic context may shape not only whether students encounter climate education, but how they interpret it, internalise it, and relate it to their own lives. That matters, because a response to the climate crisis that only makes sense to people with the time and stability to act on it leaves out the people it will hit hardest.

I approached this through document and policy analysis, alongside a small number of interviews with educators and practitioners working in climate and sustainability education in Ireland. The gap is not mainly about access, it is about relevance. Climate education is visible in nearly every school, but it is rarely a priority, and it tends to be sustained by whichever member of staff has the time and inclination to carry it. For some students, the crisis sits alongside more immediate pressures at home, and a slow emergency struggles to register as the most pressing thing in the room.

I'm incredibly grateful to the educators who gave me their time and to the Laidlaw Foundation and my supervisors for all their help and support.