APPENDIX 46
Memorandum from Dr Nigel Rayment, Educational
Consultant on Sustainability and Diversity
During the academic year 2001-02 I was responsible
for the management and evaluation of a one-year cross-college
sustainability and diversity pilot at Hammersmith and West London
College (HWLC), a large, multi-cultural inner city general FE
institution. The project involved around 800 16-19 learners together
with a smaller number of mature students. It comprised around
70 activities or events, each examining one of three themes. These
were:
— Term 1: the environment;
— Term 3: human rights and refugee
issues.
The project was founded upon the assumption
that sustainability is about individual, cultural, social and
environmental sustainability.
The observations below derive from experiences
of that pilot project, and from the knowledge I have gained over
the past eight years as a curriculum manager in the post-compulsory
sector.
1. Why should learning play a role in sustainable
development?
— Why should learning play a role in
sustainable development? For the same reasons that sustainable
development should play a central role in learning.
— Most young people are able to understand
the need to safeguard environments and societies. However, with
so much emphasis placed over past decades upon individual aspiration,
such recognition is unlikely to occur spontaneously. Because sustainable
development and learning both deal with the present while aiming
to benefit the future, learning is an entirely logical context
in which this awareness can be fostered. Most teachers involved
in HWLC's sustainability project, many of whom had no prior commitment
to the issues involved, were quick to acknowledge the contradiction
of preparing young people for the future while doing nothing to
protect that future for them.
The young people who got most involved were
by no means confined to those who could always be relied upon
to show willing. Yes, there were AS and A2 learners, but there
were also Entry Level learners with moderate learning difficulties,
young ESOL students, and students deemed "at risk" for
behavioural or academic reasons. In several notable cases those
involved in the project began to recognise the future as part
of their inheritance and not that of their teachers, parents or
other adults. This had a positive impact upon learners accustomed
to being defined, and hence defining themselves, as socially excluded.
In several notable cases the realisation that the future was uniquely
theirs did something to challenge learners' low self-esteem. A
similar effect was achieved by the project's accent on development
education, much of which revolved around fairtrade issues. This
focus made sense because of the direct or familial relationships
many of our learners had with the regions or countries involved.
By confronting their own relative privilege and prosperity, learners
were able to step beyond their customary deficit position. In
one instance a designated "at risk" student independently
launched a campaign to persuade a local store to stock fairtrade
tea and coffee. His success made a significant impression upon
him, and he reported that it was the first time a "grown
up had really paid attention to what he was saying." That
really is empowerment.
And it is a further reason why learning and
sustainable development should not be separated. Sustainability
offers young people the opportunity to develop their campaigning
skills. In this our project was greatly assisted by the student
organisation People & Planet. Fifty of our students attended
their 6th Form conference in Oxford in March 2001, where several
signed up for workshops on lobbying. On their return to College
a disparate group including Level 3, Level 2 and Entry Level students,
put this to use, lobbying the Principal on matters ranging from
renewable energy sources to ethical procurement policies. So sustainability
proved the vehicle for an excellent hands-on lesson in political
literacy, one of Bernard Crick's three strands of Citizenship.
In the short-term theses lobbyists succeeded
in gaining more recycling facilities and an organic foods vending
machine. They also gained immeasurably in confidence and developed
both their Communication and Wider Key Skills, not least their
ability to work with others. Because, of course, once their own
esteem had been raised they were better equipped to empathise
with others.
Largely as a result of the project the College
was able to supply almost 60 volunteers to local Millennium Volunteer
and Princes' Trust projects, many of whom have achieved their
100-hour certificates, with others gaining their Excellence Awards.
Again, an illustration of the contribution sustainability can
make to the achievement of Citizenship targets.
— But, as I have suggested above, it
is not just young people who need and benefit from exposure to
the principles of sustainability. At the outset of the project
few staff had better than a hazy understanding of the compass
of sustainability. As others have argued these concepts need clarification.
2. Why should education reforms take more
account of sustainable development?
— It is a pity that the opportunities
provided by C2K and the new National Curriculum largely failed
to rise to the challenge of sustainability, and that where it
does feature it tends to do so as a discrete unit or module, as
in GNVQ Leisure & Tourism or AS Economics. Even the introduction
of Citizenship to the NC was a lost opportunity in this respect.
That having been said, if sustainability is to be represented
intelligently and in a genuinely integrated fashion across the
curriculum, effective teacher training and professional development
must be in place to support it.
— As suggested earlier, if education
is not about the future it's not about anything.
3. Why should the Government publish and
consult on the draft national strategy for Education for Sustainable
development produced by SDEP?
— Publishing the draft national strategy
is essential if Government wishes to widen the debate. It will
provide a valuable opportunity to gather more evidence of good
practice from those who are actual practitioners.
— Publication will raise the national
profile of sustainability, and will operate as an important lever
for enthusiasts and activists currently pursuing the agenda in
institutions, often in a rather lonely fashion. Awareness of the
current SDEP targets for FE seems negligible in the sector at
present.
4. What evidence exits that the Government
is effectively using formal and informal learning to support its
sustainable development strategy?
— When in September 2002 I contacted
the Learning Skills Council London West to enquire about bidding
for the second phase of sustainability demonstration project funding
(as I had been urged to do by colleagues at LSDA), I was told
that LSCLW would not be submitting any bids in relation to this
initiative. This was despite my explanation that the previous
year's project had been a DEA case study, had featured in LSDA
and Black Environment Network conferences, and had attracted the
interest of the Environment Agency. I believe similar apathy exists
across the rest of London's LSC areas.
The 2001-02 project at HWLC was part funded
from FEFC Entitlement Unit monies, since it came under the umbrella
of enrichment activities. It was also, though, significantly supported
by the Standards' Fund. And this is the point, if there is no
core funding attached to informal educational initiatives it is
hard to see how the Government can be genuinely committed to sustainability.
The project at HWLC has now been dramatically reduced in scope;
by definition, projects relating to sustainable development must
themselves, where proven useful, be sustainable.
5. What evidence exits that education for
sustainable development is at the heart of the work of the DfES,
that it is coordinated across the full range of the Department's
responsibility, or that it is addressed effectively within the
Department's policies and strategies?
— Not much to the practitioner. Ever
changing agendas, new curricula, new funding models, new quangos,
the growing inability to recruit and retain quality teaching staff;
all this argues that sustainable development is little more than
a buzz phrase at the DfES.
6. What evidence exists that education for
sustainable development is within the remit of DfES agencies,
including OFSTED, QCA, TTA, LSC, LSDA, National College of School
Leadership, Connexions, HEFCE, or that it is addressed within
agencies policies and strategies?
— OFSTED—Sustainability is not
a key criterion of the CiF, and does not feature in feedback to
institutions.
— QCA—Little evidence of an urgency
to get Sustainable Development at the heart of learning; there
must be integration.
— TTA—little evidence that it
is being taken seriously either by TTA or in CPD units in colleges.
7. What evidence exits that other Government
departments and agencies are effectively supportive of the role
of education in sustainable development?
— The Home Office policy of dispersal
is an obvious example of a Government department disrupting education's
efforts to contribute to sustainable development. As part of our
sustainability and diversity project, 16-19 ESOL students at HWLC
liaised with the Save the Children Fund to develop a peer-mentoring
programme. The aim was to provide support and advice for newly
arrived young refugees and asylum seekers. Those involved worked
not only with young people at HWLC, but also those attending other
institutions in the borough. Moreover, they have plans to work
with young home students to tackle issues of discrimination and
prejudice. Members of this initiative, clearly an admirable force
for social sustainability, have been rewarded with dispersal to
the Midlands.
I hope these comments are of some interest.
February 2003
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