This article addresses the significance of degrowth for education as a social institution and field of practice in the context of the climate crisis and need to develop a powerful climate justice movement. Drawing on a close reading of the degrowth and education literature, the article argues against claims made by some degrowth advocates that degrowth should be adopted as an overarching frame for social and educational reform. Instead, it suggests that degrowth offers a set of powerful questions, critiques, perspectives and proposals that are vital to address in current projects to rethink and rework education in the context of the climate crisis. These include discussions of good and bad forms of growth and degrowth; links between economic growth discourses and ideologies of individual social mobility; and the importance of using education to foster collective, structural responses and not just individualized actions for tackling the global climate crisis.