{"id":278,"date":"2010-09-02T14:42:54","date_gmt":"2010-09-02T13:42:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=278"},"modified":"2010-09-02T14:42:54","modified_gmt":"2010-09-02T13:42:54","slug":"the-sustainable-schools-strategy-is-dead-long-live","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2010\/09\/02\/the-sustainable-schools-strategy-is-dead-long-live\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sustainable Schools Strategy is Dead: long live \u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It is widely reported that the Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, has now abandoned the department\u2019s sustainable schools strategy and, hence, any active government promotion of, and support for, the idea and reality of sustainable schools.\u00a0 I say \u201cwidely reported\u201d because, although I have not seen any formal announcement, and the new DfE website says nothing about sustainability or ESD, everyone seems to think it\u2019s <em>fait accompli<\/em>.\u00a0 Evidence of this is the recent email petition from <em>People and Planet<\/em> where (young) people are urged to personalise the following message:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Dear Secretary of State for Education<\/p>\n<p>School students are our future, and if we want a sustainable, low-carbon future we need the government to support schools in teaching these issues.\u00a0 A truly green government would put sustainability teaching at the heart of its education strategy.<\/p>\n<p>I call on you to:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>ensure that the government creates the opportunities for all students to learn about sustainability issues<\/li>\n<li>provide all schools with access to resources and education which supports them in becoming truly sustainable schools.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Yours<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Clicking <em>SEND<\/em> speeds the message to Mr Gove\u2019s inbox.\u00a0 This isn\u2019t bad as messages go, and certainly points up the contrast between this decision and the government\u2019s claim to be the greenest ever, and an enthusiastic promoter of sustainable development.\u00a0 Thus, it\u2019s hard to think that the withdrawal is <em>ideological<\/em>.\u00a0 So, perhaps it was simply finance-driven, in the sense that the able people within the sustainable schools unit can now be released for more important work, as the government sees it.<\/p>\n<p>The sustainable schools strategy is a powerful one, not only because it has good ideas and is meaningful for schools, but also (and in large part) <em>because<\/em> it came from the DCSF.\u00a0 It is unusual to find this happening, as education ministries around the world do tend to leave it to others.\u00a0 In a review essay on sustainable schools, to be published in <em>Environmental Education Research<\/em>, I ended with this thought:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u2026 it is appropriate and salutary to return to Mary Clark\u2019s distinction between the dominant processes of moulding society to fit the status quo and its received wisdoms, and the enabling of a critique of beliefs and assumptions which aids the creation of new ways of thinking.\u00a0 Whilst a small unit within the UK\u2019s DCSF has been doing the latter, and doing it well within large resource constraints, the DCSF mainstream has been focused on the former, and it is this, almost bi-polar, climate within which sustainable schools are struggling to evolve.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Thus, one way of reading what Mr Gove seems to have done is as a return to letting Defra, NAEE, SE-Ed, etc speak for an education focusing on environmental integrity and ecosystem quality, and DfID, DEA, TIDE~, etc speak for an education focusing on international development, global citizenship and social justice.\u00a0 However, whatever Mr Gove now decides to do, he cannot <em>undo<\/em> the fact that, for five years, the DCSF has stimulated the creative bringing together of these ideas across all aspects of what a school does.\u00a0 The challenge for all of us who think this work is vital for all our (and others\u2019) futures is to continue this work together.\u00a0 In doing so, I hope the Secretary of State\u2019s now unfunded, but very public, blessing will be ringing in our ears.<\/p>\n<p>...............................<\/p>\n<p>NB, This comment is to be published in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.naee.org.uk\/\">National Association for Environmental Education's<\/a> journal: <em>Environmental Education<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It is widely reported that the Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, has now abandoned the department\u2019s sustainable schools strategy and, hence, any active government promotion of, and support for, the idea and reality of sustainable schools.\u00a0 I say...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-new-publications"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}