Put Climate Change and Sustainability across the curriculum

These are two of the key areas that the new curriculum that emerges from the Curriculum and Assessment Review (CAR) needs to prioritise.

This is the message in a piece in the TES too: that it needs to be taught across the curriculum. 

It is contained in a letter sent to Bridget Phillipson.

The signatories of the letter include climate scientists, academics and leading names from the education sector, including Cat Scutt, deputy CEO of the Chartered College of Teaching, and Lee Elliot Major, professor of social mobility at the University of Exeter.

It says that climate change and sustainability must become embedded across the curriculum for all children up to age 18, and not just be restricted to science and geography.

The lead signatory is someone very well known to the geography community: Nicola Walshe.

The article explains she has a PhD in glaciology and was previously Head of Geography in three secondary schools.

She told Tes that her department’s research from 2023, which questioned 850 teachers, revealed a desire from them to have climate change and sustainability “embedded across all disciplines at all phases”.

“Teachers said they felt they needed more professional development support to embed climate change and sustainability throughout the subject,” she added.

She said: “History and English have a role, as do all other humanities. If we just focus on science and geography, it is likely either to create more anxiety or turn people off. A multi-disciplinary approach allows us to explain the issue through different lenses, different perspectives at appropriate times.”

Source: https://www.tes.com/magazine/news/general/ministers-urged-ensure-climate-change-taught-across-curriculum