Examination of Witnesses (Questions 300-319)
Thursday 8 May 2003
ENVIRONMENTAL AUDIT
COMMITTEE, SUB-COMMITTEE
ON EDUCATION
FOR SUSTAINABLE
DEVELOPMENT
Q300 Mr Ainsworth: Good citizenship
is very much a part of that. How is it all working? You have this
thing called a Schools' Sampling Project where you go out and
find out how this great stuff is being delivered. Have you included
a look at ESD in any of the sample work that you have done? If
so, what have you found?
Dr Colwill: The answer to that
is we have not asked specific questions through the Schools' Sampling
Project on education for sustainable development. We have talked
about our resources. Just to put the Schools' Sampling Project
in the context of our whole programme for monitoring the curriculum,
that was a project that we set up in 1995, post the Dearing Review
of the curriculum, as a way of gathering information on schools,
largely about the manageability of the Dearing curriculum and
their response to the standards and the nature of the curriculum,
as a tool really to support us in the review that we carried out
in the year 2000. But it is a longitudinal survey. We have been
gathering the information about schools' perceptions of the curriculum
from the mid-90s right the way through, and we tend to use that
sample both to ask ongoing longitudinal questions (like the manageability
of the programmes of study, whether schools believe they are overloaded)
and also to focus on particular issues that are pertinent in that
particular year (for example, we were looking around 2002 at the
introduction of citizenship and the work that was being done there).
So we tend to focus on large things. As yet, we have not done
a particular focus on ESD through the Schools' Sampling Project,
although we have looked at the use of QCA resources and how useful
people find those resources, and that includes National Curriculum
online, where ESD is located. The Schools' Sampling Project is
only one part of our methodology for monitoring the National Curriculum.
It also involves a range of other activities and, specific research
studies. Each of our subject teams within QCA has programmes of
meetings and visits—meetings with practitioners, visits
to schools, meetings with key players—all of which is evidence-gathering
about how the curriculum is working.
Q301 Mr Ainsworth: How much of that
is specific to ESD?
Dr Colwill: Not a very large part
of it.
Q302 Mr Ainsworth: Your website says,
"Sustainable development is the fundamental challenge that
all societies face if we are to avoid long-term damage to the
earth's basic life support system." So it is worth giving
it a bit of emphasis, is it not? If that is what you believe,
then it would be helpful to see slightly more effort put behind
making it work.
Mr Westaway: I would certainly
agree with that. I think the Schools' Sampling Project would not
be the place to do it. I do not think it lends itself very well
to the postal-questionnaire type of approach. I know the experience
of the panel, when we commissioned a piece of survey work to find
out how prominent ESD was in schools, found great difficulty in
communicating what it was after to schools. I think there were
problems about terminology and whether the schools interpreted
the words in the way that the surveyors wanted them to interpret
them. Probably the OFSTED investigation approach is a far better,
more effective way of identifying what education for sustainable
development actually is going on in schools than any sort of superficial
postal questionnaire. I do not think that would be the way to
go. Maybe the seminar approach or the other methodologies that
Ian has talked about would be helpful, but we are talking about
a fairly small scale operation here. It is not a huge resource.
Dr Colwill: We have recently had
a conference with OFSTED to look at closer ways of working between
the two organisations. One of the outcomes of that was an agreement
that we would do more in the way of joint investigations in particular
areas. I think the problem with SSP is it is largely a quantitative
survey. It invites "Agree/disagree" etcetera. Where
you are talking about something like education for sustainable
development, you actually want to get under the surface of "Do
you do something on education for sustainable development or do
you not"? That is why, I would agree with John, we want some
qualitative research into education for sustainable development.
We have the methodology to do that. The issue is at what point
we choose to make that one of our priorities in terms of the focus
across all the teams that are looking at it. Last year our focus
was very much on how schools were implementing the inclusion statement
and looking at diversity, equal opportunities and so on. This
year we have yet to identify what those priorities are.
Q303 Chairman: Do you think you might
be identifying this as one of those issues?
Dr Colwill: It is certainly one
of the issues that we need to look at in terms of all the areas
of learning across the curriculum, but this gives an added impetus
to our considerations.
Q304 Chairman: You do not have anyone
actually driving that; it is a question of whether or not you
choose to do it.
Dr Colwill: Indeed, it would be.
Q305 Mrs Clark: I was wondering whether
you are facing any pressure from schools, from head teachers,
from individual subject teachers, to say we would like to give
this a higher priority. Or is your feeling, as mine is, speaking
as an ex-teacher, that in the majority of schools, apart from
perhaps at the primary level, it is not even on the road map of
their interest, not in citizenship and not in anything else either—or
maybe a little bit in geography.
Mr Westaway: I think the irony
is that the heads and the schools that have been putting most
pressure on us to provide support are those which are already
doing most ESD. It is the very ones that are not involved that
are not giving the demand.
Q306 Mr Challen: I am wondering where
the impetus for the ESD website came from. Was it inspired by
the DfES or did you go to them and ask for it and get some money
for it?
Mr Westaway: There is a tradition
of support and guidance for environmental education which, as
you know, was the precursor of ESD. Those who are longer in the
tooth will remember Curriculum Guidance 7 from the National Curriculum
Council (of blessed memory), and SCAA, in the mid-90s, did some
guidance on teaching environmental matters, so we have a tradition
of providing guidance in this area. When the National Curriculum
was revised and education for sustainable development was given
a more prominent role, the Government Sustainable Development
Education Panel recommended very strongly that those improvements
in the curriculum needed to be supported by guidance and support
for schools, and that was a recommendation to the Department which
led them to commission us to produce the website. So the Department
actually invited us to start work on the website back in late
2000, I think it was, or early 2001. Since then, each year we
have put together a specification for the way in which the website
may develop over the next year and we then go to the Department
to ask for funding for that work.
Q307 Mr Challen: I think you have
had up to 9,000 hits a month. I am wondering how you would rate
that, whether it is successful. In terms of the overall schools
community, is that good or bad?
Mr Westaway: It is difficult to
know. The only thing I have compared it with is the number of
hits that different subject pages in the National Curriculum website
get. Certainly the ESD website is getting the same sort of number
of hits as English and maths, and far more than in many other
subjects. In those terms, it seems to be very successful. Although,
it is interesting, if you go behind those figures a little bit,
the pages of the website which are still being hit most are those
which are: What is sustainable development about? What is ESD
about? Why is it important? How can I build on what we are already
doing? rather than getting into the details. So it still seems
to be providing a useful function just to help schools come to
terms with what this is all about.
Q308 Mr Challen: So you would describe
their knowledge as being fairly fluid or at a developmental stage.
Mr Westaway: I think that is very
much the case.
Q309 Mr Challen: Will that lead to
further development of the site?
Mr Westaway: We are certainly
proposing to continue to develop the site in the coming year.
We have put forward a specification for work for the coming financial
year and the indications are that the Department will fund that.
One area that we are developing is an area of the website to do
with professional development and to suggest ways in which teachers
coming to this new may use the website either to inform themselves
or to work with other teachers in their schools on this area.
Q310 Mr Challen: Will that feedback
into the training of teachers as well? Training is ongoing, of
course, but, in the initial training, filling the gap there.
Mr Westaway: That goes beyond
our remit. Initial teacher training and professional development
lie elsewhere but I would like to think this was part of that
initiative and I would like to see more training going on in this
area.
Q311 Mr Challen: From the knowledge
that you pick up from the website, are you able to communicate
to the teacher training bodies the gaps that exist so that they
can then adjust their training?
Mr Westaway: It is not a QCA responsibility,
the Government's panel for Sustainable Development Education were
certainly making contacts with the teacher training agency to
try to argue the case for education for sustainable development
being part of initial teacher training. But, like the National
Curriculum, the teacher training curriculum is a very full one
and there is already considerable pressure on it. It is very difficult
to argue the case for yet something else, even though one is convinced
of the value of it.
Q312 Mr Challen: There are other
ESD websites being set up. Is there any coordination or do you
see yourselves as being the number one site?
Mr Westaway: Of course! One of
the reasons why we were keen to set up the ESD website in the
first place was because although there is an awful lot of support
out there on the web about education for sustainable development,
it was very difficult for teachers to get access to it. I remember
hearing at a talk about what happens when you put ESD into search
engines: you either end up with no hits because of the way the
search engine works or three million. That is not very much help
to teachers when they are trying to get focused advice. One of
the thoughts behind the ESD website was that it would become the
first point of contact and, if it did not provide the information
that the teacher needed, it would at least point them in the right
direction where they might go to find it.
Q313 Mr Challen: The QCA has recently
made available guidance on the opportunities for ESD in the schemes
of work for various subjects. How often are these revised?
Mr Westaway: First of all, the
schemes of work are an optional resource for schools to use. They
may either pick them up and use them in their entirety or selectively
or not use them at all. It is not like the National Curriculum,
for example. There are opportunities for education for sustainable
development in the schemes of work in different subjects and I
suppose the frequency of references to ESD in the schemes of work
represents how prominent a part it is in the National Curriculum
in those subjects. There is ongoing work on the schemes of work,
but it is not a formal programme of revising units. For example,
the current work is in Key Stages 1 and 2, where we are going
to add onto the website units that schools have actually developed
for their own purposes. They have picked up one of the units on
the scheme of work, they have revised it, they have moulded it
to how they feel it fits into their school. The idea is that we
can demonstrate the process by which a school can take one of
these one-size-fits-all units and apply it to their own circumstances.
The other area of work we are doing is combining units in different
subjects. In geography, which is obviously the area with which
I am most familiar, we are looking at some primary units of work
which combine geography and science, geography and history, geography
and modern foreign languages. But there is no formal process of
revising units because they are an optional resource for schools
to use.
Dr Colwill: It is more a question
of growing the site rather than necessarily revisiting stuff that
is on the site and revising it. We can add things on to it. It
is a site which is not ours. It is a site which originally belonged
to SEU within the DfES. We have for some time been responsible
for managing and revising the site and we are in negotiations
to get that site transferred over so that we can actually set
up almost a virtuous triangle, if you like, of sites. We have,
on the one hand, the National Curriculum site, which is the statutory
requirements with links into resources; we have the schemes of
work, which then show how those statutory requirements can be
turned into the operational planning for schools; and we also
have a site called the "National Curriculum in Action"
site, which looks at pupils' work and demonstrates not only the
standards that can be achieved but also other things. We are increasingly
using that National Curriculum in Action site as a way of demonstrating
practical examples through pupils' work of the things schools
do. Most recently, for example, we have included a lot of material
on there which demonstrates how ICT can be used across a whole
range of subjects to promote teaching in those subjects. There
are items on that site that have been put in there relating to
various areas of learning across the curriculum. There are links
in any piece of work to the relevant learning across the curriculum
area. The idea of a virtuous triangle of sites which has, if you
like, the statutory requirement in terms of the National Curriculum,
support and guidance about planning that, and then examples of
what that means in terms of what actually happens in the classroom
when teachers turn it into work by pupils, will actually be a
very powerful combination of sites I think. We are looking to
do that. All our efforts now are focused in terms of developing
the website.
Q314 Mr Challen: What if somebody
came along to you, like English Nature, for example, talking about
bio-diversity, or other relevant organisations talking about fisheries
and the collapse of world fishing stocks and the priority that
that was given at the World Sustainable Summit in Johannesburg
last year. How could you accommodate that into schemes of work?
Would you adopt ideas from such organisations easily?
Dr Colwill: It is a fairly flexible
resource. We can add units on there to demonstrate certain things.
Certainly in some subjects we have a selection of particular aspects
of the curriculum because of the amount of choice in some of those
aspects of the curriculum. So we do have the facility to add units
on, because the nature of the scheme of work says to teachers,
"Here are example units. You can develop them in this way."
Because the National Curriculum online has a feature that links
into educational resources and educational materials, we have
opportunities to provide links through a process called meta-tagging
to materials on other people's websites. We have particularly
tried to get work from the schemes of work in the National Curriculum
Action Site and so on. There are opportunities, as I say, to grow
that site, and the sooner we get control of it, the greater opportunity
we will have to grow it.
Mr Westaway: I would also make
the point that the QCA does not have a monopoly of writing units
for the curriculum. If there are organisations which feel they
have a unit that needs to be taught, then there is nothing to
stop them using the framework from the QCA scheme of work and
developing a unit which meets their purposes and disseminating
it.
Q315 Mr Challen: Finally, would you
say that the site is actually your most powerful interactive tool
or is it perhaps one amongst many and not the most powerful?
Mr Westaway: In terms of ESD specifically?
Q316 Mr Challen: That is right.
Mr Westaway: I think the website
is the most powerful weapon in our ESD armoury, yes.
Q317 Mrs Clark: I am not intending
to be cynical here, indeed the website is very good, but do you
not think in terms of education and teaching that viewing a website
is a very, very solitary activity? The whole business about effective
teaching is actually speaking, communicating, etcetera, and not
people just sitting there, with their eyes glued to a particular
screen and using the mouse, etcetera. I am afraid I cannot see
the website as a be-all and end-all weapon or even the centrepiece.
That is the first point. Secondly, we have skated around whether
or not ESD is going to be an integral part of teacher training
programmes. I would argue—and I hope that government would
as well—that the training of a teacher is not just those
two years or year of an initial course. Teacher training goes
on through the 30-year lifespan or more of a teacher. Certainly
I remember going on some very, very good Department for Education
and Science short courses in London and Cambridge, etcetera, and
I was wondering whether there are any possibilities or plans of
which you know to have not just teacher training or just the website
but to integrate some of these in the professional ongoing development
of a teacher in proper DfES short courses, which, hopefully, will
not all be just about sitting behind computer screens.
Mr Westaway: In terms of the website
being a solitary activity, yes, it is. As I said earlier, I do
not see it as being something just to be used in isolation. In
this year's development programme, we are planning on suggesting
ways in which it might be used in collaborative activities within
schools. The problem is, as I said, the QCA remit does not extend
to initial teacher training or continuing professional development.
When I say it is the main weapon in our armoury, it is the main
weapon in our armoury within our remit. I would love to see it
being used within the context of an effective initial teacher
training programme and continuing professional development programme
for education for sustainable development, but that decision lies
elsewhere really.
Q318 Mrs Clark: Perhaps that is something
on which the Sub-committee might like to comment or take up subsequently
with ministers.
Mr Westaway: I think that would
be very supportive.
Q319 Chairman: If we may move on
to qualifications. We are interested to know whether or not QCA
has developed guidance on the requirements and opportunities for
future GCSE and AS/A level qualifications and foundation stages
of learning. Is that envisaged? What progress have you made?
Mr Westaway: Both of those areas
were part of our work programme for this year. We have content
on ESD opportunities in qualifications ready to go on the website
now. We have some initial materials on opportunities for ESD in
the foundation stage. They will be a little bit further away,
but they are in development. In qualifications it is very much
more difficult than it is in the National Curriculum, because
there are a number of different qualifications within each subject
area. To offer guidance about what ESD opportunities there are
in the National Curriculum is fairly straight forward because
all the schools are following the National Curriculum. To offer
advice on the opportunities for ESD in, say, science GCSE—I
will not use the geography example—will partly depend on
which GCSE specification a school is following. There is some
variation between them. Some may offer more opportunities than
others. We are trying, alongside some exemplar material about
opportunities within particular specifications or syllabuses,
to provide a suggested way in which teachers may do that for themselves
in relation to the syllabus that they are using in their own school.
We are using it, perhaps, more in a professional development way.
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