Education policy-makers confront the task of developing strategies that provide an integrated response to the plight of children from communities of entrenched disadvantage; producing in students the capabilities to deal with environmentally unsustainable production and consumption, and accounting for the global economic challenges affecting the employment prospects of school leavers. The literature identifies a range of issues concerning the relations between education, training and workforce, and the formation of a more environmentally sustainable society. Bernstein’s (1977) conceptualisation of the relations between education and production is used as a starting point for reconceptualising the connections between school, work and eco-sustainability. Newspaper reports were analysed to explore the structuring of school knowledge in relation to societal arrangements with respect to paid work and eco-sustainability.