November 2012

  • Do we really understand The Future we Want?

    Apparently, "November 2012 saw the launch of a UK dialogue process to explore the future of education for sustainability in the UK", or so EAUC reports.   "At the invitation of the Environmental Association for Universities and Colleges (EAUC) in collaboration...

  • Shockingly good news for Mr Gove – which he may not welcome

    The BBC reports an Economist Intelligence Unit paper on world education rankings which puts the UK 6th in the top 20 developed countries.  The usual suspects (Finland, South Korea,, Singapore, ...) are ahead of us – as we know.  This...

  • Top of the Eco-schools league

    I've been catching up with Eco-school stats for England.   The Untidy Britain Group has a helpful league table showing the top twenty local authorities where Eco-school registrations are compared with the number of schools in a particular area.  Unsurprisingly, perhaps,...

  • Too late for two degrees?

    Absolutely, says PricewaterhouseCoopers [pcw] in their latest Low Carbon Index Report.  This is the Report's Foreword by Leo Johnson, pcw Partner for sustainability and climate change: It’s time to plan for a warmer world. The annual Low Carbon Economy Index centres...

  • Are there are still innocents abroad ...

    ... who think that the UK government has a clear and coherent energy policy despite all the evidence around them?  Are there those who really believe that carbon targets will be met, or that the lights will stay on, or...

  • The BBC Science Club

    I watched this the other night as it promised to be Brian Cox-free.  It was, and I was impressed with what went on: populist, but serious-ish.  I actually learned something – about Einstein's work on fridges. The kitchen experiment to...

  • The saber-tooth curriculum

    I have been searching for a while now for a web-version of the Saber-Tooth Curriculum.  I remember this from my teacher training, those long years ago, when teachers were encouraged (that is, required) to think about curriculum – as opposed...

  • ESD – more on supply and demand

    I blogged a couple of weeks ago about supply- and demand-side approaches to ESD provision in formal education programmes.  Here's another dimension to the debate. ESD is normally presented as a supply-side issue.  It concerns what teachers do, and how...

  • Letting a thousand civil servants ...

    Let's face it, Mr Gove's cunning plan to sack 1000 of his Department's staff is probably not Maoist in intent, though it is in terms of zeal.   He is unlikely to have thought to himself one morning over his...

  • One Wales, one planet, two languages

    A while back, I posted something on the SHED blog about the 2009 report: One Wales: One Planet and a question Jane Davidson asks in a recent lecture: "So what would a sustainable Wales look like?"  This seems to be...