{"id":6197,"date":"2015-01-06T07:56:15","date_gmt":"2015-01-06T07:56:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6197"},"modified":"2015-01-06T07:56:15","modified_gmt":"2015-01-06T07:56:15","slug":"dfe-dismisses-esd2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2015\/01\/06\/dfe-dismisses-esd2\/","title":{"rendered":"DfE dismisses ESD2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here are a couple of\u00a0further comments on the <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2015\/01\/02\/another-ministerial-stonewalling\/\">letter<\/a> that Steve Martin and I got from the DfE just before New Year. \u00a0I have already written about\u00a0the \"we were busy reorganising\" excuse they gave for not going to Japan.<\/p>\n<p><strong>1.<\/strong> Even though most of the response was about the English school curriculum, it\u00a0came from the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/government\/uploads\/system\/uploads\/attachment_data\/file\/236755\/overseas_territories_factsheet.pdf\">International Education<\/a> section of the DfE. \u00a0This is\u00a0focused on education in other countries, rather than on the idea of 'international education', which helps explain why, historically, this section's interest in ESD and the like has been, at best, minimalist. \u00a0IE majors on things to do with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oecd.org\/pisa\/\">PISA<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/timss.bc.edu\">PIRLS &amp;\u00a0TIMSS<\/a>\u00a0which means it's now seen as rather\u00a0important, even if its work has nothing to do with curriculum.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a02.<\/strong> I thought this paragraph particularly revealing:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>Schools\u00a0may incorporate sustainable development in their teaching within the\u00a0broad framework of the citizenship curriculum.\u00a0 Additionally, the new programmes of study for geography and science cover this issue from key stage 3 and focus on the key concepts in science and geography, rather than political, economic or social debates on this topic. \u00a0In order for children to develop a firm understanding of climate change, it is essential that it is taught as a carefully sequenced progression, starting with the fundamental concepts and relevant background knowledge which underpin this topic.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And there was I thinking that\u00a0\"<em>concepts and ...\u00a0knowledge<\/em>\" and \"<em>political, economic or social debate<\/em>\" went rather well together \u2013 in an <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2014\/04\/08\/are-you-looking-for-a-global-learning-case-study\/\">ESD2<\/a> sense. \u00a0 Poor, deluded\u00a0me! \u00a0Note also, the \"<em>or<\/em>\" in the previous line, as if the social, economic, environmental and political can ever be separated. \u00a0In the DfE mind, it seems they can.<\/p>\n<p><strong>3.<\/strong>\u00a0This mantra:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>The Government is very supportive of opportunities being made available to schools in England to incorporate education for sustainable development (ESD) into their teaching but believes that schools themselves are best placed to make decisions about how they do this. \u00a0In our recent review of the national curriculum, one of our key aims was to give teaching professionals more autonomy to decide what and how to teach.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>... now looks rather threadbare, as the claim about\u00a0greater space and autonomy\u00a0seems more evident in rhetoric than practice.<\/p>\n<p>It is the lack of \u00a0encouragement, however, that is the most disappointing and dispiriting factor here. \u00a0Encouragement costs nothing, but even that\u00a0was too high a price for Mr Gove to pay; Ms Morgan continues his\u00a0penny-pinching ways.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here are a couple of\u00a0further comments on the letter that Steve Martin and I got from the DfE just before New Year. \u00a0I have already written about\u00a0the \"we were busy reorganising\" excuse they gave for not going to Japan. 1....<\/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":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6197","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=6197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6197\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}