I'm going to the House of Commons today to the reception organised by Teach the Future. I'm representing NAEE which is a strong supporter of young people's efforts to bring about the sort of curriculum change that represents an entitlement to learn about the climate and ecological crises we face, and what we can do about these. I'm also lending my own personal moral support to what these splendid young people are doing. See the BBC's recent feature on them.
Teach the Future says that a core curriculum in English schools should deal with:
- What is the climate emergency?
- What are the ecological challenges?
- What are the socio-economic implications of dealing with 1 and 2?
What they are asking for is:
- an independent review of how the education system is preparing young people for the future
- changes to teaching standards and a new professional qualification for teachers
- funding for youth-led climate social action in every school, college and university (because we need action now, and we learn when we lead) and
- funding for net-zero educational buildings as a national infrastructure priority
Given the problems that we face and our lack of policies to deal with them, these seem reasonable asks.
I doubt that the government will agree to much of this. Its position was put well by the DfE secretary of state at the annual ASCL conference in April 2019. Then, Damian Hinds urged children to stop walking out on strikes and instead learn how they can play an active role in saving the environment. He said:
“I want children in school, and I want children learning to be the engineers, the climate scientists, the geographers of the future. And you’ve got a much better chance of that being in school than not being in school. I would also say to those children, it is great that they take an interest in this topic, which is one of the biggest topics facing us as a country and as a world. But they can actually take some pride in what this country has been doing. When you talk to people in other governments around the world, they do talk about what this country has done, and the leadership role that we have taken on climate change. But there’s more that we need to do, clearly there is more that as a community we need to do. So yes in that respect, yes I’m delighted those children are taking a keen interest. But I would rather they were in school.”
Hinds was sacked in July. Speaking in September on Radio 4’s Today, Nick Gibb MP (the surviving No 2 in the DfE) reconfirmed all this, saying that although the government shared young people’s concern about climate change, ...
“We don’t think it should be at the expense of a child’s education because what we want is for the next generation to be as well educated as possible to tackle these kinds of problem, and you don’t do that by missing out on an education.”
He added that even missing one day of school could affect examination results.
Gibb and others continually say that the national curriculum provides a solid base for learning about the climate crisis and this message is being repeated by Conservative MPs in their replies to young (and not so young) people's letters to them. The NAEE blog has a good example of this, and the admirable Zamzam Ibrahim, the President of NUS and SoS_UK has written a strong rebuttal. Her full text is on the Teach the Future blog. She ends this by writing:
"We really want to support the Government to reform the education system around the climate emergency and ecological crisis, and to make the education system a core pillar of their climate change plans in the run up to COP26. We are doing this so we can ensure our generation does a better job of managing the planet the current lot have done to date. Reforming our education system is our best bet to securing our future.”
Respond