Fat chance of this, you might think, when neither education nor sustainability look like being discussed at all. \u00a0My money's on the economy generally, dealing with the deficit in particular, welfare, the NHS and other parties' lack of credibility. \u00a0Anyway, who would ever think that \"ESD\" would play well on doorsteps? \u00a0Madness. \u00a0Of course, UCU is not actually calling for ESD; rather, it's looking towards more and greater \"sustainability skills\", all of which shows the uselessness of ESD as a slogan.<\/p>\n
UCU, acting on behalf of the GreenerJobsAlliance (there's a video here<\/a>), has sent a\u00a0letter<\/a> to political parties in the lead up to the election with a\u00a0link to its\u00a010 Point Action Plan<\/em> for\u00a0sustainability skills. \u00a0There are no signs that this has had any effect. \u00a0Here are the 10 points:<\/p>\n 1. Legislation<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n A voluntary approach is failing to deliver change at the pace and scale required. In the school and tertiary sector a driver for curriculum change is needed.<\/p>\n ACTION: Adopt a new legal requirement to make sustainable development a central organising principle of publicly funded bodies.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n 2. Government leadership<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n There is currently a lack of effective co-ordination across government departments to embed the skills for a low carbon transition.<\/p>\n ACTION: Create a ministerial post to promote cross-departmental working around the policy measures listed below.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n 3. Industrial strategy<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n The Government\u2019s Industrial Strategy does not link growth with sustainability criteria. This has hindered progress on matching the supply and demand for training between education providers and employers.<\/p>\n ACTION: Adopt sector sustainability commitments for an active green industrial strategy and match to targets for job creation and training.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n 4. Apprenticeships<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Many apprenticeship programmes lack credibility in terms of quality and quantity. \u00a0Each apprenticeship needs to be tailored to ensure the integration of sustainability themes. Any expansion must address the under-representation of some sections of society in certain trades.<\/p>\n ACTION: Assess the content of apprenticeships and introduce or enhance sustainability components.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n 5. Qualification and awarding bodies<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Current progress on curriculum change is hampered by a lack of sustainability focus from some organisations overseeing education programmes.<\/p>\n ACTION: Assess the content of current learning outcomes and criteria and introduce or enhance sustainability components.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n 6. Research<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Research and development have a crucial role in the transition to a low carbon economy. \u00a0The UK spends a lower percentage of GDP than the EU average.<\/p>\n ACTION: Increase to 3% and prioritise funding for research and development that contributes to sustainable development.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n 7. Education sector funding<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n The sector has experienced cuts that have reduced its capacity to deliver a curriculum capable of meeting today\u2019s challenges. \u00a0Long-term strategic planning requires a consistent and properly financed framework.<\/p>\n ACTION: Funding bodies must link additional funding to sustainability performance.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n 8. Inspection and monitoring\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n The inspection framework is not effectively monitoring ESD performance. Institutions should be inspected for ESD evidence such as curriculum audits and reports to governors.<\/p>\n ACTION: Quality assurance bodies such as the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) and Ofsted must be given a clear mandate to monitor ESD performance.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n 9. Stakeholder engagement<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n The opportunity for promoting ESD across key stakeholders is huge. Institutions often fail to engage with other sector organisations, their staff and students, and community organisations to maximise this potential.<\/p>\n ACTION:\u00a0 Provision of local authority funding ring-fenced to facilitate joint community-based working on sustainable employment growth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n 10. Just transition<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n The move towards a low carbon economy must be built on the just transition principles of equality, consultation and decent jobs. ESD can make a crucial contribution to this process but only as part of a wider duty to consult with workers and their trade union reps.<\/p>\n ACTION: Introduce a legal right to appoint trade union environment reps in the workplace.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n While it's easy to pick holes in this sort of thing \u2013 for example, #2 seems to be promoting a Department of Administrative Affairs<\/em> in the style of Jim Hacker \u2013 there is some sense in what is proposed here, #3, #5 and #6, for example. \u00a0None of those mention ESD, you'll note. \u00a0Others are barmy. \u00a0Take #8, giving QAA a \"mandate to monitor ESD performance\". \u00a0Given the mess it made of its efforts with the HEA to generate guidelines (what became of them?), why would anyone trust\u00a0it to do\u00a0this?<\/p>\n Anyway, back to the election, personally, in that spirit of optimism I can never quite shake off, I'm really looking forward to UKIP's taking up ESD with its normal saloon bar enthusiasm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fat chance of this, you might think, when neither education nor sustainability look like being discussed at all. \u00a0My money's on the economy generally, dealing with the deficit in particular, welfare, the NHS and other parties' lack of credibility. \u00a0Anyway,...<\/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-6229","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\/6229","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=6229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6229\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}