July 2016

  • Education, sustainability post-2015

    A new series of UNESCO reports is promised: the GEMs [Global Education Monitoring] reports.  These will monitor "the state of education in the new framework of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)".  They replace the Global Monitoring [GM] reports (GMR). The first...

  • The liberal, the neoliberal, the illiberal and the Higher Education Bill

    Here's John Blewitt on the imperfections in the new higher education Bill working its way through parliament.  He argues that if universities are going to be successful in "shaping any sustainable economic alternatives to the neoliberal consensus which drives the climate crisis, then...

  • 6 (possible) reasons to ban GM plant cultivation in the EU

    These reasons are those of the Green group in the EU Parliament, not mine.   You can read them here. This is their shot across the bows of the EU Commission which recently submitted to the EU standing committee on plants,...

  • Lies, damned lies and UNESCO website headlines

    "G7 education ministers reaffirm commitment to ESD" was the headline in a recent UNESCO briefing (the ESD ZOOM Newsletter).  Clicking on the 'more info' link, however, takes you to this headline: "G7 Education Ministers reaffirm commitment to quality education" ... which...

  • Priti Patel's challenge to her new self

    Before Priti Patel became the UK's new secretary of state for international development in the latest government changes, she had already set her new self a challenge.  Three years ago she said her department of state should be abolished.  But now...

  • Turbulent Times: Skills for a Global World – sort of

    Turbulent Times: Skills for a Global World is a new report from OCR and Think Global.  You can find it on TG's website.  Their blurb says: "Focusing on the views and understandings of employers, who can play a crucial role in...

  • Inching towards a sustainable university

    Towards a Sustainable University is the title of Anthony Cortese's review of Designing the New American University by Michael Crow and William Dabars (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015).  You can read it here in Great Transition. As you would expect, this is a thoughtful...

  • Universities, the SDGs and EAUC

    EAUC asks, rather naively it seems to me, whether universities are doing any work around the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals [SDGs], and it is working with a range of organisations, including the Regional Centres for Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development (RCEs),...

  • Vision 2030+

    The final report of Scotland's LfS Group, Vision 2030+, has been released.  It is here. The report "establishes a convergence between LfS and the Sustainable Development Goals as a direction for further policy development to 2030 (the 15-year period of the SDGs)"....

  • What's it all about, Valerie?

    As no one seems to know what outdoor learning is for, the Institute for Outdoor Learning [IOL] is to be congratulated for confronting the issue head on at its 2016 conference on 14-15th October. Valerie Hannon will be the keynote speaker....