{"id":7916,"date":"2021-06-08T07:40:28","date_gmt":"2021-06-08T07:40:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=7916"},"modified":"2021-06-08T07:40:28","modified_gmt":"2021-06-08T07:40:28","slug":"the-education-environment-and-sustainable-citizenship-bill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2021\/06\/08\/the-education-environment-and-sustainable-citizenship-bill\/","title":{"rendered":"The Education (Environment and Sustainable Citizenship) Bill\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"
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An <\/span>Education (Environment and Sustainable Citizenship) Bill<\/a><\/em>\u00a0has been introduced into the House of Lords to \"make provision in the national curriculum regarding sustainable citizenship and protection of the environment.\" \u00a0It's a<\/span>\u00a0private members' bill and is 6th in line for debate. \u00a0This probably means that its chances of success are slim, but you never know. \u00a0Either way, congratulations are due to SEEd which has been trying to do something like this for some time, and whatever the outcomes turn out to be, at least there will have been some focused debate in parliament; this will make a change. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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Of course, DfE might support the Bill to ease it through its various stages. \u00a0Or it might not. \u00a0Indeed, it might support it in order to wreck it. \u00a0Odder things have happened in the mother of parliaments. \u00a0We shall see.<\/div>\n
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The Bill seems well drafted.<\/div>\n
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1. \u2013 It seeks to amend section 78(1)(c) of the 2020 Education Act \u2013 general requirements in relation to curriculum<\/em> \u2013 by adding \"instils an ethos and ability to care for oneself, others and the natural environment, for present and future generations.\u201d<\/div>\n
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2. \u2013 And to amend section 80(1)(f) of the Act \u2013 basic curriculum for every maintained school in England<\/em> \u2013 to make provision \"for sustainable citizenship education for all registered pupils who are provided with secondary education.\u201d<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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3. \u2013 It then charges the Secretary of State to \"give guidance about the provision of education under section 80(1)(f).\"<\/div>\n
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4. \u2013 It requires that this guidance must be given with a view to ensuring that pupils learn about the impact of human behaviour on the natural environment, and the impact of the natural environment on human wellbeing. \u00a0And ...<\/div>\n
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5. \u2013 with a view to ensuring that pupils have opportunities to develop skills to protect and restore the natural environment, and skills to measure the impact of their actions on the natural environment.<\/div>\n
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6. \u2013 \u00a0It then requires that the governing body of a maintained secondary school must have regard to guidance under this section.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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7. \u2013 And requires the Secretary of State to review guidance under this section from time to time<\/p>\n

8. \u2013 It defines \u201ccitizenship\u201d to include programmes of study that encourage learning to protect and restore the natural environment for present and future generations, including\u00a0but not limited to climate change considerations.\" \u00a0This applies to Key Stages 1 to 4.<\/p>\n

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So, what to make of this? \u00a0The clever bit is probably requiring the Secretary of State to give guidance about the provision of education under section 80(1)(f), although this only applies to secondary schools (and then only to those that take any notice of the national curriculum). \u00a0This is what DfE has been most reluctant to do up to now. \u00a0This guidance is so\u00a0that pupils will learn about the impact of human behaviour on the natural environment and can develop skills [i] to protect and restore it, and [ii] to measure the impact of their actions.<\/p>\n

It goes (almost) without saying that the effectiveness of this amendment will depend on the way that the guidance is written: its scope and detail, and its open or closed focus. \u00a0In particular, on how \"skills\" and \"actions\" are defined.<\/p>\n

Doing so with a generosity of spirit could result in meaningful change. \u00a0Done with narrow-minded parsimony, it will be likely be little more than business as usual with the interested schools and teachers addressing issues, and the uninterested carrying on as now. \u00a0A crucial question, I guess, is to what extent this guidance represents a programme of study. \u00a0I imagine that DfE will want to avoid this.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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An Education (Environment and Sustainable Citizenship) Bill\u00a0has been introduced into the House of Lords to \"make provision in the national curriculum regarding sustainable citizenship and protection of the environment.\" \u00a0It's a\u00a0private members' bill and is 6th in line for debate....<\/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":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","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\/7916","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=7916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7916\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}