I've written a few times – for example here and here – about why the DfE is reluctant to endorse the 6 asks of Teach the Future, particularly so when it comes to changing the curriculum so that school students can learn in depth about how climate breakdown will affect their lives, and what they might do about it. At heart, DfE just thinks that students should go to school and learn what society has decided they should. Doing so, it thinks, will educate them to play their future roles in (amongst other things) dealing with climate change. There is something to be said for that argument.
But there is more to it than this. This is the politics. I don't mean party politics, but that discussion on matters around what to do about the climate breakdown would inevitably be inherently political. Given that politics is the means whereby society makes its choices about what to do, this seems obvious.
It would be a bit of a problem when it comes to focusing on looking ahead and seeing what might happen as global heating continues as this deals with issues such as IPCC data extrapolations, possible / probable temperature rises, inevitable ice sheet and permafrost meltings, the huge risk of positive feedback loops, possible runaway CO2, desertification, species loss and migration, economic collapse, etc., etc. This is open-ended stuff as it concerns what if questions, extrapolations, and speculations. Very little of this is taught now in any systematic or coherent way. It involves moving away from what is known now with reasonable certainty. Some of this is political in that some groups bring their politics to bear when thinking about these data. You don't have to though, and not everyone does.
Respond