June 2020

So the DfID is to be no more, although we're keeping the 0.7% of national income devoted to development.  We're one of only a small handful of countries to do this as hardly anyone else took seriously that UN idea...

I wrote the other week about my local council's Catch 22 recycling centre policy.  Those familiar with the book will remember Major Major who could not be consulted when he was in the office, but only when he wasn't.  He'd...

I see that Teach the Future has set out its policy asks for Scotland.  They broadly mirror the three English ones, but there's an additional ask of “Increased priority for sustainability in school inspections and publicly influencing educational rankings”.   As NAEE notes, the...

Who's doing any education about the baleful effects of the fast-fashion industry on the environment?  Not schools, it would seem, and not the industry either as they've a vested (pun not intended) interest in keeping shtum. Research shows that since...

I got this email the other day: Dear Friends,  As part of our new open conversation on #RebootingEducation, we are inviting you to join us for a virtual conversation with some of the most innovative voices working across education, on Thursday 18th...

I was struck by a message sent recently to the EAUC Mailbase: "Through a programme analysis I have shown that the majority of our college programmes include aspects that are easily linked to the UN SDGs targets in some shape...

Talk is cheap; wild rhetoric even cheaper.  Thus, talking green and making demands of other people are easy; it’s facing up to the implications of being green that’s hard.  We should all know this, and maybe we shall come to...

JH Plumb quotes (p.159) the following advert from the Liverpool Chronicle (15 December 1768) in his England in the Eighteenth Century: a study of the development of English society (Pelican Books): “To be SOLD, A FINE NEGRO BOY, of about 4 feet...

I attended the online launch of OCR’s consultation into creating a Natural History GCSE.  There were live inputs from Mary Colwell, whose idea it was, and from OCR's Jill Duffy and Tim Oates.   There was also a string of...

I see that the NAEE update recently drew attention to a Spectator podcast on the ethics and politics of carbon off-setting.  It had a contribution from Shell which clearly paid for the whole thing. Dear me; the Spectator and Shell!...