APPENDIX 49
Memorandum from Worcestershire LEA
BACKGROUND
— Worcestershire LEA has a strong commitment
to ESD. Worcestershire County Council as a whole is also very
supportive of ESD for schools, its own staff and for the communities
of Worcestershire.
— There is an in-house sustainability
awareness and training programme for County Council staff which
includes a whole day training session which all staff are expected
to complete.
— School sustainability targets including
numbers participating in the Eco-Schools programme are included
in the County Council sustainability targets.
— A team of County Council Staff including
an ESD Officer, School Travel Plan Officer and Waste minimization
and recycling Officer and others(based in Environmental Services),
and Teacher Advisers for ESD, Citizenship, PSHE and The Healthy
School Coordinator (based in the LEA) work closely together to
support schools and to deliver the County ESD Strategy.
— Over 100 schools in Worcestershire
are involved in the Eco-Schools Scheme and 11 have the green flag
award with more on the way.
— We place strong emphasis on pupil
participation in ESD and environmental management of schools.
Our 3rd Annual Eco-Schools Conference to be held in March is being
planned and organised largely by Primary School pupils.
— Our LEA Centre for ESD, based at
Bishops Wood, works closely with all schools in Worcestershire
and is well known and highly regarded throughout Britain and Europe
for the quality of its innovative approaches to ESD.
OUR SUBMISSIONS
— Despite the commitment of the LEA
and County Council to supporting ESD in schools, ESD remains at
best, only of passing relevance in many schools.
— Although the National Curriculum
revisions of 2,000 A.D. made specific mention of ESD it is hard
for teachers to see what that means in reality other than overt
references in Geography.
— There were many opportunities to
make links between ESD and Citizenship but in most cases these
were not made explicit.
— With schools addressing targets in
Literacy, Numeracy etc. getting to grips with ESD was not a priority
for schools.
— Although in-service training in
ESD is available, schools find it hard to free staff for something
which they do not see as a government priority.
— Sustainable Development is a complex
concept and we can only come someway to achieving it if people,
(children and adults) acquire the knowledge, understandings and
skills to not only understand the issues but also to make informed
choices.
— There is an apparent lack of joined
up thinking in the efforts of DFID, DETR and DfES to promote aspects
of ESD and SD. Of the Agencies involved, DfES would appear to
have the least commitment.
— While we applaud the work of QCA
in developing a teachers web-site for ESD, the lack of paper based
support may be seen by schools as an indication that this is of
low priority. The difficulty in obtaining a full range of case
studies for this web-site is perhaps indicative of the state of
ESD in schools.
— The publication of a national strategy
for ESD would give credibility to an area of the curriculum which
many schools and teachers are sympathetic towards but for which
they lack the confidence to devote resources to.
— It would also help Government departments
and Agencies, Local Government and NGOs to work more purposefully
together and see the links between their work and all sectors
of the community.
We would be delighted to welcome members of
the Select Committee or its representatives, to visit us in Worcestershire
to show you some of the work we are doing in the field of ESD
and to discuss further our brief submissions.
February 2003
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