Abstract:

The educational area that has recently been given increasing attention by all educational factors is the environmental education. Environmental education has long been talked about and special attention has been paid to it. Looking at the consequences for humanity due to which nature has been increasingly protesting and resisting lately through diseases, floods, earthquakes and other natural disasters, it is only a signal that man's relationship with nature is in a state of imbalance that threatens humanity and leads to many consequences: suffering, loss of human lives, climate change and the need to completely abandon certain parts of the planet and frequent migrations, which has far-reaching consequences for the human race and all other living beings, and the possibility of complete self-destruction of man and humanity. An additional confirmation of this is the COVID-19 pandemic, the consequences of which have affected the whole world and all spheres of society, including children. For these reasons, there are more and more frequent appeals for environmental education to be reaffirmed and to be implemented at all levels of school systems by all educational factors.
The paper's objective is to present through the literature review the importance of the inclusion of child ecological education and its implementation in the schooling system. Through the methodology of literature comparison and elaboration, we refer the school as the most massive and most organized educational institution in the implementation of environmental education. All educational factors in the school have a great role in the development of environmental awareness, environmental action and formation, and a special role belongs to school principals.
The paper also presents and elaborates the types and importance of environmental competencies of principals and teachers and their role in environmental education and student formation. The preparation of students and training for ecologically formed personalities who will build an adequate relationship with their environment and with their loved ones will largely depend on the formation of environmental awareness and environmental action. Because man is part of nature and each disrupted communication affects humanity. For this reason, the school principal has an important role in environmental education, ecological development and the formation of an ecologically aware member of society because his training and competence regarding nature and relationships between people can result in negative consequences for the environment, man and actions and the entire educational work of the school he heads will depend on that.
The main goal of the paper is to analyze and present the views of scientists engaged in environmental education. It is initially assumed that one of the reasons for the serious natural and social crisis in which our planet and the world community have fallen is the degradation of morals and the lack of environmental education. Insufficient ecological formation and moral activity of prominent pedagogical thinkers is pointed out, as well as ways to return to true human values, ways and needs, and ways to encourage and develop ecological competencies of children and youth. The main result of this paper is the conclusion that it is of crucial importance to include ecological education in all the school grades with special emphasis on primary and preschool education.

Keywords:

Environmental education, school principal, environmental competences, children and young people.