Oral evidence

Taken before the Environmental Audit Committee

Education for Sustainable Development Sub-Committee

on Thursday 22 May 2003

Members present:

Joan Walley, in the Chair
Mr Peter Ainsworth
Mr Colin Challen
Mr David Chaytor
Mrs Helen Clark

__________

Witnesses: PROFESSOR ANDY BLOWERS and DR STEPHEN HINCHLIFFE, Open University, examined.

Q449  Chairman: Good morning, Dr Hinchliffe; welcome to our Sub-Committee. Thank you very much for coming here and giving your time this morning. As you are aware, we are looking at the whole issue of sustainable development in all its forms, and we are particularly interested in the contribution that the Open University can make, and wondered if you had any additional comments that you wanted to make to set the scene for our short session this morning.

Dr Hinchliffe: Andy and I have been chairing a course that has just "gone live", as we say in the OU, at the start of this year. We have been working on it for four years with a team of 18 academics drawn from a wide variety of sciences, social sciences, arts and maths, so in that sense it is attempting to be disciplinary. There are a thousand students taking it this year, and we expect that number to increase in later years --- our students are quite wise in not doing the course in the first year of presentation because there are usually a few hiccoughs. That number will go up. There are 50 tutors teaching around the country, and it combines books, workbooks, video, audio, CD roms and so on. The big issue that we have struggled with is what kinds of skills and formats are needed. One way in which we have manage to keep that inter-disciplinary team together and teach environment through that sustainable development is through a number of themes and getting a very simple story of environment and future of environment. That simple story is basically teaching students about environmental change, which is happening all the time, whether we like it or not. Those changes produce conflicts and contests, and people have different takes on what those changes are. There are then the sorts of responses that we can make to those changes. It is a very simple story: things change; there are contests, and then we need to figure out ways of responding to those changes and those contests. One way of getting all the scientists, social sciences, arts and the rest of the team together and to cross-cut through all the stories that environments and sustainable development bring up, is through a number of concepts that we have derived that are around us all the time, but certainly help generate a common language. There are three groups, but I would say that the most successful would be uncertainty of risk, and that runs right through the course, teaching our students about the importance of dealing with uncertainty and risk in future. Another one is time and space, understanding the long and short timescales that Parliament has to deal with. Sustainable development is relevant in long timescales. The final one is values, power and action. That is very significant in understanding sustainable development; we are not individuals with free choices, we are shaped by our value systems, by power and so on, and we act in a context. They become very important and enable us to have conversations across sometimes very difficult barriers between the social sciences.

Q450  Chairman: Would you like to comment by way of opening on the special role that the OU has to play?

Professor Blowers: We were going to focus on this course because I think that is a helpful topic. The OU, as some of you know, is a distance-teaching course. We have had a course team of something like 18 people working for four years, and that is drawn across five different faculties; so there is a really inter-disciplinary mix that is quite unique and cannot be achieved anywhere else. That is a very intensive peer-review process as well --- probably the most intensive you can get. On top of that, there will be 50 other people in terms of support staff. We have got 50 people on our teaching course, and there are about 1,000 students a year. So that will reach at least 10,000 students over this course lifetime. In our terms, it is a very big operation. It is a foundation course that is inter-disciplinary, integrated and multimedia. I have brought some things for you to peruse at your leisure. This is the course as published so far. The best book of all, which the two of us have been doing, is yet to come! We have also got six videos, workbooks, four audios --- and Michael Meacher participated in one of those --- CD rom and so on. It is not just disciplinary, it is intellectually path-finding. I do not think there is anything else like it. I think that trying to teach in this way can demonstrate that you can get people both to engage and to try and understand and make sense of environment and what it means. We are stressing particularly the notion of change and the fact that we are not outside our environment. One of the problems, it seems to me, is that you teach environment as if it is something else and that it is not part of us. We have been very much at pains not to do that. Obviously, we cannot describe the whole thing to you, but we have had experience ourselves, working, for example, with social scientists, science and technologists et cetera, which has been very revealing. We hope, obviously, to provide some of that for our audience. We think that the audience could be much wider than the OU.

Q451  Chairman: Pardon my ignorance, but why did you bother with it? Why did you develop this course because, as I understand it, you already have an environment course? What is so different about this one?

Professor Blowers: We had one before, a course called Environment, since 1991. In one sense, this is a replacement. The OU is probably one of the only places that can really teach right across the discipline and integrate, because of the nature of the way we operate. That has been a very successful course. We wanted to replace it. We had to put a team together, but I would stress that this particular course is entirely different. Therefore, to answer your question, we had a slot to do it --- that is one thing --- but the way we were motivated in terms of doing it is quite another. We set out on this occasion deliberately to develop a course which had certain structural frameworks which meant that we could, if you like, cohabit a common language among the various disciplines. I do not think that that had been achieved before, and I think we have gone further in that respect.

Dr Hinchliffe: There was a real gap in the University. There are a lot of specialist courses in environment, for example environmental technology, environmental pollution and so on, but there is nothing in the portfolio for a named degree in environmental studies. We did not have anything that brought all the components together that showed them in the mix. This is very much a course that takes issues, like wiping-out of biodiversity, climate change or whatever, and attacks them from social perspectives and scientific perspectives in an integrated way. We did not have a course like that. It is necessary to keep that updated in the context of the OU.

Q452  Mrs Clark: Is it unique in terms of other more traditional universities? Are you groundbreaking here? Since you have started the course, have you had any indication that other universities are going to copy you, or even collaborate?

Professor Blowers: We cannot tell that for the moment because the course has only just started. It is its first year of presentation. Steve can say something about it and what its clientele is like. If it is anything like other Open University courses, then we know it will have a profound influence elsewhere, because our courses tend to be picked up, or elements of them, and taught elsewhere. After all, if you put the sort of investment I have just described into this, which is quite enormous and is unique in that sense, in a sense that is a resource that ought to be utilised. I do think it is path-breaking and innovative in both an intellectual and a teaching sense. I do not have time to go into details, but I am firmly convinced of that. I would say that of all the things I have worked on in a 32-year career at the Open University, this has probably been the most exciting, and I felt most privileged to be able to undertake this. I think we have produced something that we are genuinely proud of, but we also think it has huge purchase in terms of this whole debate about how you get environmental issues across the board to the public in a way that we have not before.

Q453  Mrs Clark: Into the mainstream, which is important, is it not?

Dr Hinchliffe: Yes.

Q454  Mrs Clark: You have mentioned at the beginning, Dr Hinchliffe, that there was a range of disciplines involved in putting together this course, which is absolutely essential, and it is very much at the heart of our inquiry. Can you tell us which academic teams were involved? Were there any problems or tensions? Were people fighting for their own patch?

Dr Hinchliffe: I think there were. The problem with instant priorities --- often the whole is less than the sum of the parts, and that is why it takes four years to do. We have had representatives involved from the sciences, particularly the life sciences --- biology --- who we thought it was very important to get on board, given current debates on genetically modified food, which figures large in the books. Life sciences are very crucial as are the earth sciences in terms of global environmental change and so on. There was a hard core from geography, which I suppose has traditionally been one of those places where a number of these disciplines come together in the social environmental sense, and I think in some ways they did a lot of the knitting together of the various parts. We also had someone from philosophy to help us discuss values and those kinds of things. We had a mathematician to help us with modelling for the environment and so on, and helping to produce roms, particularly on a population model. There were people representing the faculty of technology, so they come from a more engineering background. There are engineering people who have been involved for many years with things like this --- energy issues, wind power and so on.

Q455  Mrs Clark: What about the arts and English literature?

Dr Hinchliffe: That was really only representing the philosophy. There is a real problem there, that we did not get enough of the arts in.

Q456  Mrs Clark: How could you remedy that in future? Are you planning to be more inclusive? How can you track them in?

Professor Blowers: We have in painting, for example. It is the area of literature where we perhaps have not. One thing we should say is that you cannot have a comprehensive course; it is impossible. We have not gone out of our way to teach everything. We are providing a vehicle whereby people who have understood it can actually apply it. This is the whole point. It is what the way of doing the course does for the students themselves. If they pick up a completely different issue on the environment to the ones that we have taught, we think we have given them the skills whereby they can interpret that. On the point about the inter-disciplinary nature, we had four years together with people who we do not normally communicate with, who live behind barriers --- increasingly so in higher education these days. We have, I think, managed to break a lot of those barriers down and to inhabit common languages by setting up common concepts to think through and to teach. That is not to say I am now a scientist, but I do understand a lot more about the scientific mind --- as I hope they do about mine as a social scientist. You can only do that by that very long-term process of literally sitting down, week after week, and working things through.

Q457  Mrs Clark: Is it going to be more common, this pattern of inter-subject and discipline?

Professor Blowers: I fear not --- and this is a personal view. I think there is an enormous -----

Q458  Mrs Clark: It is getting worse.

Professor Blowers: In my judgment, the discipline domination has been growing, both in terms of teaching assessments and in terms of research and so on. Although there are a lot of courses that are apparently cross-disciplinary, certainly at the Open University there has been some retreat, I would say; and that is one of the universities which can do most. Personally, I feel a missionary zeal about this.

Q459  Mr Challen: Are there any synergies between education for sustainable development and your distance-learning methodology?

Dr Hinchliffe: I am actually tutoring a group now in Birmingham, the Black Country, partly to see this process through. I have 25 students covering all the metropolitan boroughs; they are council workers and they are covering most of the boroughs in the Black Country area and Birmingham City Council; there are lawyers in the group and people who are householders and so on; so we have a wide range from all walks of life and age groups. Clearly, they are doing the course to take back to their workplaces, in order to further themselves; but also with the aim of doing things in their day-to-day lives. I think there is a very strong sense on the course that students should feel in some ways that going through the course, they can take what they have got from the course into the wider world, both to understand more and to be citizens in that sense, but also in terms of active involvement. There is a very strong sense that the OU does provide that. We are talking about part-time students who are involved in all sorts of other areas of life.

Q460  Mr Challen: Is there any way that you are able to pass on the lessons of how you teach this course to other people with interests relating to ESD, be they government or academia or elsewhere?

Dr Hinchliffe: In what sense? Do you men other than through the recruitment to the course?

Q461  Mr Challen: The OU is always groundbreaking. As a former OU student many years ago, I was very impressed by the groundbreaking nature of it. You have to be innovative in order to teach from a distance. I am sure that other institutions, particularly in academia, or in governments, could learn from your experience, particularly in education for sustainable development. Have you thought that it might be possible to pass on the lessons from your experience? I know it is early days.

Professor Blowers: I think it is quite difficult. In one sense, we are like exhausted volcanoes; we have spent four years working on this. Once you have delivered a course, that, in a sense, does not end it, but you do pass on to other things. One of the problems is perhaps not often delivering that experience. That is the thought I would like you to take away. Although this course will have influence in many other institutions --- and, after all, the books are sold off the shelf, so it is not that it is inaccessible --- the experience that our students are going through is quite important. We will have a big review at the end of this first year to see how the course has gone. It is updated, and, like the environment, it is constantly changing, but we will be building on it as the years go on. I often think that perhaps these Open University experiences that are quite unique do not perhaps get the overall purchase or defusion that they deserve --- and that is something we ought to work at. One would welcome perhaps a comment in your report on these courses.

Q462  Mr Challen: Do other people express interest in how you evaluate these courses? Do they come along and ask you how you manage to do something?

Dr Hinchliffe: There is a sort of informal network because it was not just written by OU academics; there were other people ---including Jaqui over there, who actually contributed to the course, and came to a few meetings when their work was being discussed and so on. Presumably, that then feeds back into other institutions. We talked of colleagues in other universities. We are in that network and talking in that way. I guess the issue is the formal way in which we could disseminate our practices.

Professor Blowers: There are two things: one is the intellectual side --- that is, what we build. We built something that was quite important through this inter-disciplinary process that we have discussed. There is also the question of how we teach it, which we have not said very much about. The ways and means whereby we teach, in terms of setting up clear aims, learning objectives, relating them to the assessment strategies and having individual projects and utilising the full range of multimedia, are different experiences. There is a different experience in reading a book, which is fundamentally different to listening to an audio cassette. All of those experiences are quite important taken together. They perhaps permit us to teach environmental issues in a way you cannot just do through one medium. That experience is something we perhaps should build on or at least consolidate and try and defuse a bit.

Q463  Mr Challen: I understand that you are both geographers. It seems to me that we have quite a number of geographers in the vanguard of environment and education for sustainable development. Do you think it is something that academics are not that interested in; or not as interested as you are

Professor Blowers: I sometimes call myself an environmental politics and policy expert! I do not think it is so true necessarily. I think sociologists and political scientists also are interested and do have sub-specialisms in the environmental fields in their subjects.

Dr Hinchliffe: We are not in a very good position to talk about this in the OU because it is called the Human Geography Department, but the main thing about most geography departments is that you have in the same building physical and human geographers, which means that you are faced, day-to-day, with that notion of engaging with both the social side, which is vastly important, but also engaging with the world around us and studying the processes and so on. I suppose that geographers are used to having those conversations, fraught though they may be. That has allowed us to go out. I think there is plenty of interest in our university, and that is why we were able to do this course in technologies, sciences, social sciences --- and to a lesser extent arts in our university, but certainly in other universities. Geography has been the home for this course for a number of years, partly because we are able to chair those kinds of discussions and slightly used to that kind of tension, whereas others might turn their backs on it a little bit.

Q464  Mr Challen: What kind of teaching challenges are there in this rather over-arching subject of ESD?

Dr Hinchliffe: The main one is to get students into things in ways that are not too compartmentalised from the start but nonetheless teach basic skills. That has been our real difficulty. We have cracked that partly. The whole case is very much case-study led. For example, radioactive waste management becomes a big issue in terms of thinking about the future. We lead off a number of times with that. The whole course starts on an estuary in Essex, to get people feeling that a number of issues come into one place at one time --- bird migrations to managed retreat, to farming or whatever. We lead with three chapters in book 1, centred on biodiversity and extinction, as a way to get the biologists to talk about what is going on. The philosophers talk about why or why we should not be bothered if something becomes extinct. The more technological side talks about risk uncertainty. We try and keep the same focus and come at it from different angles. The real challenge is that there is a risk with that strategy that students miss out on the basic building blocks. They sometimes come to university education without some kind of foundational science or foundational social science, or whatever. Some students struggle, depending on their different routes into the course, and that is a real difficulty, to get that over.

Professor Blowers: But they can move on to these things. It is not stand-alone in itself. The biggest challenge when we started this four years ago was what we should teach. If you are just given a course to construct which says "environment" it has in a sense no precedence. It is not like trying to teach certain aspects of mathematics or chemistry or whatever; you literally do have to invent a strategy and a means of teaching it. That was the big challenge. I think we confronted that and succeeded. Of course, we would now say that it now looks as though it is the only way you can do it. That is one of the problems. I am sure there are other ways of doing this, but we have found a way that we think is working, and that is quite important. You do not know any of these things, and it was a struggle in the dark to start with --- just setting things up, getting languages going and getting ideas moving, and beginning to work out how we could teach it and how we could think about these things. We used these concepts to try to do that

Dr Hinchliffe: The principle has always been to inspire first and then give them a need to know, so that we set up a problem, and then say that in order to address the problem of genetic modification and crop field trials, they need to understand some of the science; and then they go off on a need-to-know basis. We are hoping that that inspiration will then lead those who are really interested to go to do a genetics course. We see ourselves in the role of setting the inspiration going; and then they can find out more if they want to. There are risks, though with that.

Q465  Mr Challen: What exactly is the skills gap that you have identified that has led to the creation of this course?

Dr Hinchliffe: The ability to bring a lot of things together at once; the ability to understand the social complexities as well as the scientific, physical complexities of any problem, like climate change. You cannot solve a problem like that by simply looking at the science or simply looking at the social science. That is the gap. There is a deficit, however, before you get there generally in education: it is the lack of scientific and social scientific literacy before people get to the university.

Professor Blowers: We are trying to get people to understand how you make sense of things. A lot of courses, including our predecessor course, are basically content. You can teach people an awful lot about the environment or a whole set of subjects about it, and you almost leave them after that. In a sense, they have not got transferable skills to take it forward. We have been at pains to ensure that people can do that. You will see, if you are interested in the way we have set this out, but essentially you want to get people to engage with issues, partly because they are motivated and interested; and then to be able, through the vehicle of this course, to apply what they have done to the world in which they live. I think that is an extremely important thing to try and achieve and it is quite difficult; but I would say that we have gone some way towards that. That is quite different from the kind of teaching of this subject overall heretofore.

Q466  Mr Challen: You clearly need a grounding in science to be able to tackle this course. Perhaps you do not agree with that, but it seems to me from what you have described that that is the case. For those people that do not have a grounding in science but want to be involved in this field, how have they been able to approach this subject?

Dr Hinchliffe: At the OU we have things called First Level Courses, which used to be called Foundation Courses --- and we got rid of that language, just as that language came back in! You can do this course as your first course at the OU, having done nothing at all. It is literally open access. It has been a real challenge in delivering it in that sense. We assume some scientific literacy but not an awful lot, it must be said. We have at the OU a number of resources, particularly on the Web now, for example The Good Science Guide which is a generic resource for OU courses. We advice those students who are really struggling that when they are doing their assignments they should get The Good Science Guide from their regional centre, or access material on the Web increasingly, to help them with those basic skills. It is getting the students to do that which is the problem, and to get then to know that they have to do that. The scientists who do this court may struggle with some of the social ideas and the arts ideas, or whatever, and the kind of literacies you need to think in those ways. We have tried to not be exclusive or exclude anyone from the course; but, as I said, in terms of getting the assignments back, we have not necessarily got that absolutely right. I think it is very difficult to get it absolutely right for everyone, given the OU has an open access ethos behind it.

Q467  Mr Challen: What sort of students have you attracted so far? Have they mainly been from a scientific background?

Dr Hinchliffe: As far as I know --- and I am speaking slightly off the record because I will have to check the stats --- it is normally a third social science, a third more technical subjects, and a third sciences. That obviously adds up to one! But then there are a number of people who are starting straight away, and some people have come from the arts side, which are more of a minority. In terms of my own group, that mix is about right.

Q468  Mr Challen: Are they predisposed towards environmental change or positive action in the environment, or do they come out of curiosity?

Dr Hinchliffe: A mixture. Some are doing jobs where they feel getting a course like this behind them, or a series of courses at the OU, will help them in their career, especially those working in councils or in businesses where they want to get some sort of environmental management qualification. Others --- retirees or whatever --- where they are interested in current affairs and so on.

Q469  Mr Challen: Is the course recognised by any professional bodies as yet?

Professor Blowers: Can we take notice of that question? In the past, these courses have been recognised by the Royal Thames Valley Institute. I think that scheme still persists. There may be some in the science and technology area. I do not know, is the direct answer to the question. Certainly, successor courses, as part of the environmental sciences or social sciences programmes could be.

Q470  Mr Challen: Could people use this course building in to other university courses? Sometimes you can transfer ----

Professor Blowers: The only problem with that is that this course is a sixty-point course; i.e., it is a sixth of an undergraduate degree, so it is a big chunk. The way we have built it --- I personally would not want to see it disaggregated. The very nature of what we are trying to do means that it is integrated, and you should through that whole experience. I certainly think a number of other universities would be pretty wise to have a look at what we have done. We do have credit transfers and so on; there are transfers between universities in terms of various modules so that that is possible. I do not know quite how they nestle because the requirements of different institutions are quite different. Their modules are generally shorter than ours for example. From what we have said, I hope you have got the message that we think that as things stand at this moment, in 2003, this is probably the best there is, in terms of a foundational level inter-disciplinary approach towards understanding the environment.

Q471  Mr Ainsworth: Very briefly, following on from that, you have alluded to some structural differences between the OU and other universities, and you have just mentioned the courses and so on. I am curious about why, given the importance of this subject, which you clearly recognise, and the popularity of the course that you are running, other universities have not gone for it. Is there more than structure at play here? Is there an attitude problem amongst other universities and academics?

Professor Blowers: I think this question obviously needs to be directed at other universities.

Q472  Mr Ainsworth: I am asking your opinion.

Professor Blowers: No, no, I have been so long out that I do not know what is going on elsewhere. I know that one of your advisors will quickly put you wise on this. I just think that partly it goes back to the problem that I entertained earlier: usually, many universities are not set up for this kind of experience in terms of teaching. You tend, on the whole, still to teach your own flock; but we are not messiahs with our own flock; we are a course team. We are collaborating collectively to produce a particular course, and therefore we write together and we try and think together. It is a strange way of doing things in some ways, but it is bound to produce something different, which I think is extremely difficult to produce elsewhere. After all, we are putting huge up-front resources into this. Very few places would have the luxury of putting 18 academics together for four years more or less full-time to do this. That is the way the Open University is constructed because of its big output in terms of numbers of students. In that sense, we have to be good because we have got the opportunity, which I do not think occurs elsewhere. That is not to say that there are not magnificent courses elsewhere --- and in my judgment there are, particularly in some of the fields relating to ours, but which are perhaps a little bit more specialised. There may well be introductory type courses of this type, but I certainly do not think they would have the quality that this would have because it would be too difficult to do.

Dr Hinchliffe: I think we can overstate the differences sometimes. There are a lot of academics who would love to be involved in this kind of endeavour. I did it at Keele University on an inter-disciplinary environmental management course. It is difficult to reproduce the intensity of what we have got at the OU just because of the structural differences. We do not have students on a day-to-day basis at the OU which allows us to sit in a meeting all day, which is very difficult to do for other academics. I think the structure difference is the key; I do not think it is the willingness because I think a lot of people are very willing to be in this kind of endeavour and who are interested in the kinds of things we have done --- and we are also interested in what they have done.

Q473  Chairman: I am going to have to bring this session to a close, but there is one issue that I should like to explore in a little more detail, and it concerns the situation at the Open University with respect to the academics that you have there. Do you feel that amongst them --- and talking now just about the Open University --- that all academics cross-curricular share this zeal that you have for sustainable development; or is there a sense that it is something that government expects people, from whatever walk of life, to take on; but it is not really shared by academics right across the board? What is your sense of that?

Professor Blowers: A good question. We have obviously come across zealots, but perhaps after four years we are getting tired! I think it is in the nature of the way the Open University works that when it sets up course teams, they are enthusiastic about that particular thing. We are not consciously teaching sustainable development, by the way. This whole course tends to that whole debate about what sustainable development is and how we can achieve it and so on. We prefer not to use that terminology, although it is totally related to the sort of things that you are looking at. I wrote about sustainable development ten years ago, but I do not think that debate has moved on. The big benefit of it, of course, is that at least politically it keeps this issue in people's minds. The mere fact that people are using that phrase is quite important, difficult though that phrase is to comprehend. In terms of enthusiasm, people involved in environment are enthusiastic, but the worry is that people who are not involved are not enthusiastic. That is the difficult gap to bridge. You see this in your daily life with citizens. The people we attract to these causes are people who are already in the family, and going beyond that is a challenge to all of us.

Q474  Chairman: Would you say that many of the academics involved have little time for sustainable development in that sense?

Professor Blowers: All the ones that we have been working with have time and enthusiasm for this particular approach that we have used. If you asked them individually if they were in favour of sustainable development, there would be all sorts of academic debates as to what you meant by that.

Q475  Chairman: So it is not a concept that has lost credence over time?

Professor Blowers: I think academically --- I just think it is vague. In a sense, it is one of those portmanteau terms, but the beauty of it is that it does relate to the two things we are talking about, and that is that you have to know about and integrate ideas of society and environment. The two go together; they are not separate. If it does nothing else, that is what sustainable development does --- but there are all sorts of interpretations, some of which say "we can have everything anyway; you can have a good environment and plenty of economic growth"; but some people say that that is absolutely impossible. There are massive debates within this. The value of that term to me is that it does keep it on the policy agenda --- and look at the impact it has had in that sense! People are struggling to interpret it. I think that that will be the ongoing problem.

Q476  Chairman: On that note, thank you for the time you have given us this morning. We very much hope that this exchange has perhaps gone some way towards recharging your batteries.

Professor Blowers: We would like to leave you with the course, as so far delivered, plus some smaller sheets that will help you to get the general background.

 

Memorandum submitted by Forum for the Future

Examination of Witness

Witness: DR ANDY JOHNSTON, Forum for the Future, examined.

Q477  Chairman: Good morning, Dr Johnston. You have been present for some of the previous session, so we very much hope that you have an inkling of the direction that our inquiry is going in. I welcome you to our Sub-Committee and I should like to say how much we appreciate the work of Forum for the Future, which is helping to develop the overall strategy in terms of sustainable development and education. Is there anything that you wish to add to the submission that you have already made to us?

Dr Johnston: At this point, there is nothing I wish to add, but I will re-state the key points to help the debate move along. We are talking about a move away from education for sustainable development towards learning for sustainable development, the on the learning being the whole exercise; a recognition that that requires building of capacity within all sorts of training providers within the sector, but also within professional associations, regulatory bodies and all sorts of players within the education field; and that a lot of work needs to be done on demystifying the concept of sustainable development so that at least we can get on with doing something rather than endlessly debating what it means.

Q478  Mr Challen: What approach is Forum taking with higher educational institutions in regard to the HEPS initiative?

Dr Johnston: We have a two-strand approach: individual engagement with 18 partner universities, where the strategy is to identify where the institution is going, what it is trying to achieve, and how to do that in the most sustainable way possible. Under those circumstances, we operate within the framework of that particular institution. We also have programme-wide initiatives where we are picking up on - one of the things which is keeping vice-chancellors awake at night generally across the sector, and how is it that the sustainable development agenda can possibly help them to solve those problems on a sector-wide basis.

Q479  Mr Challen: What priorities does HEPS give to integrating sustainable development into the curriculum?

Dr Johnston: That, I would say, is the number one priority. If I was to draw a distinction between the previous discussion and this one, it is that we do see that there is an important role for courses, which are called sustainable development, or their main purpose is some sort of sustainable development --- professionalisation, if you like. However, by far and away the most important agenda is how to get the existing professions to behave in a more sustainable way --- what does it mean for a chemist or an engineer? That is, I think, the big agenda.

Q480  Mr Challen: The HEPS initiative will end this year. Are you going to produce an evaluation on it?

Dr Johnston: Yes, the funding comes with a whole series of outcomes, does it not?

Q481  Mr Challen: Have any lessons already been learnt

Dr Johnston: There have been substantial lessons. Probably the biggest one --- and again it refers to a question that was asked earlier about willingness within the sector --- there is an enormous amount of willingness within the higher education sector and also in further education in schools to move forward on this debate; but that is not the problem. The real issue is policy facilitation. At the moment, policy is positively getting in the way of enthusiastic individuals within universities and enthusiastic vice-chancellors getting any action going. Policy can enable sustainable development - it does not have to instruct institutions to consider it. That would be where I have discovered the biggest problem, within the higher education sector. If people want to do something for the future --- and others working in this field are working on practical ways that that can happen --- but in terms of internal debates within the institution, they need a bit of help.

Q482  Chairman: Whose policy are you referring to? Is it institutional policies or other organisations; is it government policy?

Dr Johnston: There is a whole vertical policy matrix that needs to be engaged with. I do not know if this Committee is going to be looking at the situations in Scotland Wales, but if they are not I would urge them to do, in particular in Wales. The Welsh Assembly Government has sustainable development written into its basic constitution. That then means that the educational element of their work has sustainable development written into it. We are beginning to see all sorts of developments within Wales with the regulators. The inspectors inspect for sustainable development. They are not forcing institutions to be more sustainable; but institutions are recognising that they can now move forward on this because that fits with the whole social and economic environment of the agenda within Wales

Q483  Chairman: It gives them a green light.

Dr Johnston: Yes.

Q484  Mr Challen: How will you be sharing the information that you have gleaned from this process, to avoid duplication or getting other people re-inventing the wheel?

Dr Johnston: We have a series of guidance documents, which are the solid outputs, if you like, from the HEPS process. It mirrors the journey that HEPS went through: it started off in relatively applied environmental things like transport, and now we are moving to more strategic matters in terms of purchasing, finance, and currently most of our effort is on a guide to help with curriculum greening within universities. They will all be out by the end of this year as a result of the last two years' work. Other outputs are a reporting tool so that higher education institutions can measure their progress on sustainable development. At the moment we are not thinking of it in terms of a benchmarking tool; the idea is that we will encourage institutions to measure progress under certain sustainable development headings, and then that gives them the ability to tell everyone else what it is they are doing on sustainable development.

Q485  Mr Ainsworth: In the absence of the kind of drivers that exist in Wales that you have told us about, what are the drivers and incentives for higher education to get into this field? What is in it for them?

Dr Johnston: Different people at different levels, is the message we are picking up. In terms of what is in it for the vice-chancellor, it is his contacts with the local community, the regional development agencies and things like that, through local strategic partnerships. That is where he is picking up on the sustainable development agenda, and through boards of governors and things like that. It is at a local level, quite interestingly. I was at Loughborough yesterday, and doors were opening all over the place because one of the governors was from Ford Motor Company and at the last board meeting had asked what Loughborough was doing about sustainability --- and the answer was "don't know". People really got moving. At vice-chancellor level, that is a driver. At a national level, there is the Universities UK Sustainable Development Strategy Group, which the HEPS project --- and it was another of these little things that we helped to progress within the HEPS project --- was set up last year. I have a little note here that it might be worth talking to their Chairman, Michael Driscoll from Middlesex University, because that is the national strategic higher education engagement with sustainable development. As you work down to the levels within the institution, it is probably more useful to next think about what is driving the academics within the institution. What is driving them is student demand and demand from employers in the future. That is not a clear, coherent message as yet. We did some research on business schools where that message was completely absent from the academics they were talking to. Students are asking employers and they say, "we do not know what it is, so we are not going to do it." We have to look at that area. Forum's experience of working with our corporate partners is that there is a demand out there; so we have to try and connect those two constituencies, get them talking to each other and get a clear message about what that demand is.

Q486  Mr Ainsworth: Is there a degree of consensus within higher education about what is not being done and what needs to be done, or is the response to those issues rather patchy and dependent on individuals?

Dr Johnston: I would say it is patchy, depending on individuals at this stage. The hearts and minds element of sustainable development has got some people and not others.

Q487  Mr Ainsworth: Who or what should be involved in forging that consensus, because it seems to me that that may not create critical mass, to drive the issue along?

Dr Johnston: If I was to try and identify in process terms --- say, for example HEPS were starting all over again for another three years, then what would be the strategy? The strategy would be to engage at the peer level. Higher education, more than most sectors I have worked in --- people have paid more attention to other academics, for example, in different institutions, or other managers in different institutions than they do to their own colleagues and where they work. Therefore, it is professional associations, trade bodies, employer organisations, that are the key to getting consistency across the sector.

Q488  Mr Ainsworth: Why do you think the sector has historically been so unreceptive to the whole idea? We had the Toyne Report and nothing happened. Why?

Dr Johnston: There are probably two answers there. In terms of imposing any idea on the higher education sector or encouraging the higher education sector to take up any idea is always difficult because of academic independence and freedom, and there is that basic tenet there. If I can go back a little bit, that is why I am not wildly enthusiastic about what I would call a policy driver or a policy facilitator, or saying "this looks like you must do something about sustainable development" ---and the more resistance we are going to get within higher education; so it is a process of encouragement rather than anything else. The other element is that I think there is still a significant detachment between what is taught within universities and what is happening in the world outside and those connections.

Q489  Mr Ainsworth: There seems to be a tendency for the agenda to get started in universities with estates management, rather than what is actually being taught and learned. Do you think starting with estate management is a useful way in, or would you prefer to take it from scratch?

Dr Johnston: I think it is a useful way in. If I was to characterise the biggest thing that HEPS has achieved over the last three years, it is that we have manage to build up a bit of trust within the sector that sustainable development is not something that is going to bankrupt the institutions if they take it on board. The way in for us was to approve the estates management process. There are relatively straightforward synergies that you can make between how a university is run and managed and actually operates itself, and how the curriculum is taught. If, for example, you are teaching engineering and exhorting an engineer who is really making a contribution to sustainable development and is very enthused about carbon emissions and energy efficiency and the rest of it, but that lecture is in a room where it is all single glazed and it is obviously a completely inefficient way of running it, students are not stupid and they can pick up on that.

Q490  Mr Ainsworth: You have done some work with a Chilean university. Was that at the request of the Chilean Government?

Dr Johnston: Yes. The Chilean Government asked the university to try and find people who could help them with their curriculum.

Q491  Mr Ainsworth: Why do you think the Chileans see an importance, evidently, in integrating sustainable development through the curriculum, whereas the British Government does not seem to? What is it about Chile?

Dr Johnston: The sustainable development debate is actually far more open and progressive generally in South America, and in particular in Chile. It is something which is talked about at a political level, more than it was talked about here up until about two or three years ago. Secondly, the area we are working in --- the whole economy is based around primary resource extraction, and dominated by large multinationals which themselves have recognised the importance of a sustainable development agenda and were the key employers of most of the students in the university. There was a sort of virtuous circle, if you like, and a policy willingness. Employers were really plugged in to sustainable development, realising that they need employees who could talk this language.

Q492  Mr Ainsworth: How close are we in this country to achieving that kind of thing?

Dr Johnston: We had the willingness within the sector --- not 100 per cent by any stretch of the imagination, but there is enough there within key areas. I do not think we yet have a coherent message from industry and employers, and we do not have the facilitation at policy level. When you ask how close we are, you are probably guessing how close we are on that. My feeling is that these are not insurmountable problems, and these things can be achieved relatively short-term.

Q493  Mr Ainsworth: Closer than we were five years ago.

Dr Johnston: Definitely.

Q494  Mr Ainsworth: Can I just pick you up on what you were saying about peer pressure. How much do we reward people for taking on board this agenda? Is that something which might help encourage peer pressure?

Dr Johnston: I think so. It is one of these essential points we make about the "Are you Doing your Bit?" campaign. Our response here was that people did not actually get rewarded for doing their bit.

Q495  Chairman: Do you think that is one of the reasons why we that campaign failed?

Dr Johnston: I think so, yes. People's motivations are strange things, and sometimes people change their behaviour and then they will rationalise why they did that afterwards. Part of that whole rationalisation process is recognising others around are doing the same thing and getting some sort of benefit from it, but it just did not happen. Does that answer your question?

Q496  Chairman: You have partly answered it, yes. One of the issues we wanted to explore was what was the "Are you Doing your Bit?" campaign about; has it been monitored; did it have success; was it wrongly formulated; was it broad --- or how would we do it now with all the extra monitoring we have; and how would that assist your agenda of learning, as opposed to education?

Dr Johnston: There are two things there. Policy consistency across all tiers of government --- and we use the example drink-driving or smoking campaigns where there is continual reinforcement of those campaigns by behaviour within every government department; but in terms of the "Are you Doing your Bit?" campaign, it was very clear that it was one department doing this thing about environmental resources and other parts of government and parts of the way people understand their lives were not engaged at all. You need to have constant reinforcement of messages before you can get a behaviour change. There is a second bit to that, which is just as important. It was just about environmental resources on the whole and not about sustainable development. Any future campaign needs to make a connection between economic and social environment as well.

Q497  Mr Chaytor: Can you tell us a bit about your relationships with the DfES, and what you think their contribution has been to giving a lead?

Dr Johnston: The HEPS project came out of the Funding Council in Scotland, and then the Funding Councils of Wales and Northern Ireland came on board. That was done largely without any engagement with DfES. As time has gone on through the HEPS project, the engagement has gradually increased. You have had evidence from the Sustainable Development Education Panel. They appear to be the chief mechanism by which the DfES is engaging in this debate. I know you have had evidence about how successful that relationship happens to be. We have spoken to DfES throughout the HEPS project. We have had Michael Hipkins, Head of Finance, a civil servant, come to a finance talk. There is the beginning of engagement. Over the last month or so, that level of engagement has gone on, and I am hoping it is down to the work of his committee, in particular in the light of the article of Charles Clark. There does seem to be real movement there.

Q498  Mr Chaytor: How important is that? Do you think there ought to be a clear, well-publicised strategy from the DfES? How important would that be, given the importance of the sense of academic freedom? Would it be counterproductive if the DfES tried to give too strong a lead?

Dr Johnston: I think potentially it would be counterproductive if the DfES became prescriptive in this area. I just do not see that as being part of the culture of DfES. It deals with higher education and they are generally quite hands-on, with the right hand on the tiller, and as long as it is mentioned as encouragement, that will be enough to unlock the willingness.

Q499  Mr Chaytor: Would you like to see a formal strategy as a published document? What would the ingredients of that be? What are the key things you think the DfES ought to be highlighting?

Dr Johnston: There are two answers to that, I suppose. I probably had an ideal in my mind, and I also have a "what I think will work with Charles Clark" version. The ideal in my mind is outcome led and relatively grand vision because that is something that the sustainable development debate requires. You have to be very ambitious, think the unthinkable, see what is out there somewhere. This is long-term and is about changing the way people understand the world they are living in. Grand visions have a role, but my feeling is that with the current Minister in place, that is not necessarily the best way forward. The best way forward might be three key points that we could provide real encouragement upon. If I was to pick up on three key points, they would be these: in the managerial element within higher education, we would be looking at the way that procurement and finance is run within institutions. In terms of agreeing the curriculum, it would be addressing capacity-building amongst staff at universities. In terms of the wider community role for universities, it would be encouraging them to engage far more with their local communities. I know it is in the strategy that they should do so, and I am scared that that might become a reactive policy by institutions rather than a proactive one.

Q500  Mr Chaytor: At the moment, do you think there is enough financial incentive for individual universities to respond to those three key points; and how important do you think financial incentives are rather than the publication of specific objectives?

Dr Johnston: A lot of the philosophy that we have taken into universities as part of HEPS is that what we are asking for does not necessarily require new extra resources. What we are asking for is a change in the way they currently do things rather than another project. That is one of my concerns - that anything that comes out of the DfES should not look like another project for higher education to deliver on. It should look like, "What you are there for is to deliver education and research. We are not going to change that but we want to change the way that you are doing that". So in terms of any change of process there is a need for a little bit of funding to get over the hump, as it were, but there is no need for vast amounts of extra resource.

Q501  Mr Chaytor: Just leaving HE for a moment, in terms of FE and vocational training, what contact have you had with the LSCs? Do you think locally and nationally they are serious about this agenda? Is there any progress to report there?

Dr Johnston: I have been involved with the projects that the LSC has been running over the last two years managed by the LSDA. My concern on that process was it was very project based - small things happening with individual institutions and there was no strategy for how this was all going to add up to something more coherent. I have not had a chance to read the responses given but my understanding is that the LSDA have accepted that as well and conversations with the LSC now are all about how we can get something more coherent out of this. Of course, it is made more difficult by the relationship between national and local LSCs and we are beginning to realise that you have to engage at both levels to get this debate going.

Q502  Mr Chaytor: In terms of the professional bodies, what is their role in moving these issues?

Dr Johnston: If you are talking about the established professional bodies who do have an effect upon the curriculum through standards and the rest of it the effect they can have is quite profound,. As I mentioned, they are the vital conduit between the sustainable development of the United Kingdom and what is happening within United Kingdom higher education.

Q503  Mr Chaytor: Is it your judgment that professional bodies are taking this issue seriously, or are they dragging their feet?

Dr Johnston: Some are, and more are as every day goes by. I would argue that engineers were in there quite early on recognising the importance of this debate and Forum has done quite a lot of work in moving that debate along, but I notice in The Times Higher last week that the architecture profession is seizing this agenda and beginning a dialogue between professionals and universities, and I think this will continue to snowball as more and more professionals recognise that it is a vital part of their professional development to take this on board.

Q504  Chairman: I think we are reaching the end of this further short session but, in respect of that last point, what role do you see Forum for the Future has in respect of the networking that needs to be done as more and more people in professions and in establishments get engaged with this agenda? Do you see a strategic role for Forum for the Future in respect of facilitating that networking so the more people who are engaged, the more the information is dispersed, the more accessible it is and the more it is something that people want to come in and do. Do you see a role for yourself in that?

Dr Johnston: I see that role as very important. Forum for the Future is not about capturing ground within the sector. If we feel they are an organisation within the sector capable of doing that role then clearly they are the best people to do it, so we would engage on that whilst there was a vacuum, if you like, but the minute it was clear that the sector had taken ownership of these issues we would pass it on as quickly as possible.

Chairman: Thank you very much for making the time available and can I say how much the Sub-committee appreciates the contribution you are making to sustainable development.

 

Memorandum submitted by the Institute of Environmental Management

and Assessment

Examination of Witness

Witness: MR RUSSELL FOSTER, Chief Executive, Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment, examined.

Q505  Chairman: Good morning and welcome, Mr Foster. I think you have been able to sit through the previous sessions we have had.

Mr Foster: Yes. I found it very interesting.

Q506  Chairman: So did we, and I think what has gone before brings us naturally to the stage in our inquiry when we want to look at the role of professionals and the role of management in a little more detail. Is there anything you want to say to us by way of an opening remark?

Mr Foster: Yes. First of all, I am not quite sure how much you know about our Institute and I am quite happy to take questions about the Institute if you want to set the scene. I would like to remark on what I heard previously from the other witnesses. First of all, with regard to the Open University, we accredit some of their courses in the environmental field to the level of our associate membership, so it is quite important. A lot of the work we do under the training heading is with universities like the Open University and once they have set their courses up they can come to us to get them accredited. Also, we are in a very new profession here in the environment - it is only really twenty years old if you want to give it any history at all - and I think the things we are developing now are very much the foundations for the future. It is interesting that when the previous gentleman talked about the geography areas these are old, learned areas, whereas the environment is much newer and, indeed, sustainability is even newer as a subject, and it is very important that we have to get the groundwork and foundations right now because everybody is going to jump on this sustainability bandwagon and we are not going to be able to set standards, if we are not careful, for the people working in those areas. That is really the crux of what I wanted to say. I am quite happy to talk about the Institute and lead on to that if you wish.

Q507  Chairman: I think we want to try and get to the bottom of exactly what are the policy changes that sustainable development is bringing to the role of the professional. You touched just now on standards and clearly it is important that we do have the standards that are recognisable and so on. Can you perhaps enlighten us as to what your organisation and institute is doing in changing the role of the practice of professionals as a result of this greater understanding that we have to take sustainable development on board?

Mr Foster: Yes. It is indicative of the growth of our Institute in the last three or four years where we have gone from 4,000 to over 7,000 members that it is not just what the Institute is doing that appeals to our members but the fact they are able to get accreditation with their own profession which is recognised outside. If people are going for a job, if they are full members of our Institute and have reached that level, then this is a licence to operate, if you like, so I think it is important to have that. We realised that sustainable development was also an area that needed to have a set of standards, and in the information sheet I sent you I showed you that we worked with sustainability first and with Professor Shirley Alican (?) at the beginning of 2001, where we identified there was a need to have a set of standards for sustainable professionals to adhere to. We had a conference in February and also straw polled all our members to get their opinion, and we had about 5500 members at the time. We also did research by talking to a large amount of post-graduates from environmental courses to see what they felt about going down the sustainability stream. We pulled together all the findings and sent the findings to the Parliamentary Undersecretary of State for adult skills back in February 2002 --

Q508  Chairman: What was his response?

Mr Foster: I was going to say we got a letter back thanking us and saying they were in a bit of a quandary and once things were sorted out they would come back. To be perfectly frank, we have not heard anything since, so we have parked this which is a great shame because we have a set of standards for sustainable development professionals to adhere to and it was going to be a staged approach where they could work their way up through the different stages and they would get different accreditations at those stages; there would be a series of exams and peer reviews, etc, to allow them to work up through those stages. Now, we have not pushed this any further because we have so many other things on the go, and it is really watching all the other things going on around us, and the worry I have is that people are now coming into this area who really do not understand the full ins and outs of sustainable development, and there is a worry that people will start practising and auditing in this particular area and they do not have the right qualifications for it. It is not high agenda for me but it is a worry for me.

Chairman: I can assure you we have taken very careful note that you are waiting for a response from the Department on that.

Q509  Mr Chaytor: In terms of the other professional bodies, how do you rate their level of seriousness in doing this? We have just heard that the engineers were the first of a few.

Mr Foster: To be perfectly blunt there is a lot of other disciplines out there that see from a commercial point of view that there is a great opportunity within the environment and sustainability - that if they can get on to that bandwagon there is a great opportunity. I am not saying they are not doing good for the right reasons but that perhaps they have not got the expertise in that area to do that. The engineering institutes and the architect institutes are getting into this area because they realise that there is a large amount of kudos to be gained but also that a lot of members are doing this type of work as part of their jobs. What I think we should do is try and get all of these interested parties together to talk about this - which is what really the sustainable alliance is about.

Q510  Mr Chaytor: And you still think your Institute is the vanguard of the professional institutions?

Mr Foster: Within the environment, yes.

Q511  Mr Chaytor: And did you work with the government's panel for sustainable development when it was in existence?

Mr Foster: No.

Q512  Mr Chaytor: One of the recommendations of its first report was that sustainable development should be incorporated at all levels of professional training. How far do you feel that is starting to take place, and are there examples of particularly good practice in professional qualifications that you could quote?

Mr Foster: You mean on the sustainable side or the environmental side?

Q513  Mr Chaytor: Both.

Mr Foster: If we could say that the environment came before sustainability, companies now are addressing and understanding the environmental needs and starting to intertwine that within their normal operations, but there is still a large way to go and it tends to be the larger companies and multinationals leading the way. This is also the case with sustainability: you have the larger companies, especially the multinationals, realising the need for this and a lot of their annual reports also include a sustainability report. This has yet to filter down and certainly the SMEs are miles away from doing this - not all of them but certainly a lot of them. There are some companies out there taking this approach, and the automotive industry is a classic example where they really do understand the need for both good environmental practice and good sustainability practice - not just in the factories that manufacture the cars but in the whole supply chain, which is so important. So I think there are good examples but it is very slow progress.

Q514  Mr Chaytor: In terms of the large companies who are setting the pace for this, is that having an influence on the other professional bodies in terms of the qualifications they accredit?

Mr Foster: I think it is because you have to attain a certain level to receive a certain job level within a company, and if you decide to change companies - let's say you wanted to be an environmental manager at whatever company - you will need to have a certain accreditation in order even to get through the door of an interview. We are starting to see our full membership and our fellowship and, indeed, our associate membership opening doors for the ambitious in the industrial field.

Q515  Mr Chaytor: And are the other professional bodies looking to you for advice specifically on sustainability issues? Do you sense that this is happening?

Mr Foster: No, I am sorry. I think it is a free-for-all at the minute.

Q516  Mr Chaytor: A complete free-for-all?

Mr Foster: Completely, to be perfectly honest.

Q517  Mr Chaytor: In terms of your Institute, where do you think the specific skill shortages are? You talked earlier about the desperate need to increase the level of understanding about sustainability issues, but which particular skills do we need to strengthen?

Mr Foster: Generally there is not enough emphasis to encourage people to progress through the ranks, if you like. For example, of our 7,000 members we have 3,000 at the moment who sit there as associate members. They have no real incentive to go on to become full members of our Institute because it is not going to do an awful lot for them within their work environment. However, if there were some driver, whether governmental or by the company itself, to ensure that people doing this work at this level were at a certain level within professional bodies like ours, then that would be a driver for them to do it.

Q518  Mr Chaytor: But is not this something that the Institute could be proactive about?

Mr Foster: Very much so, and it is. One of the initiatives was that we have created the Society for the Environment which is eight constituent bodies of environmental institutes, and there are about 8-10 of them out there, some of them with only 800 members and some of them with thousands of members, but we have got together with them and created this society and put an application into the Privy Council for chartership for the society. Once that is granted we will then be able to bestow chartered environmentalists on those people who aspire to that level, and that roughly equates to full membership of our Institute. So two or three years from now, if you will excuse the phrase, you will see chartered environmentalists rolling off the production line and they will be the crème de la crème of the environmental field, and you will be able as a chartered environmentalist to hold your head up high like the chartered accountant or chartered engineer and say "I am at the top of my profession". These are very exciting times in the environmental field to have that coming down the track within the next 18 months. Now, it is that sort of thing that will inspire people to move on. One of the reasons there is a frustration in the universities is the fact that they can teach all these good things but then the student who gets their degree goes out in the big wide world and finds there are no jobs in the environmental field, because what has happened is the jobs the companies have had for the environmental person have been given to the safety manager or the security manager or the line manager - whatever. This will all change, I think, and there will be a need in the future to ensure that the person looking after the environmental legislation in companies is the one that has gone through the higher education system, got the degree, got the MSC and also has become chartered within their profession.

Q519  Mr Chaytor: And in terms of achieving the status of chartered environmentalists, what extra skills will the individual require? What extra process will they have to go through?

Mr Foster: If you look at the criteria that has been set now for chartered environmentalists submitted to the Privy Council it is a 12-point system, where you will get six of those points through academia and six through hands-on environmental practice, and the yardstick will be the seven years. You will have to get whatever qualifications you want and then you will have to do seven years of hands-on environmental practice in order to get twelve points in order to get chartered environmentalists. This is to safeguard a situation where, if somebody came out of further education at 25 or 26, they could not immediately apply for chartership. We want to see them doing practical environmental work in order to do that so you are probably looking at somebody of 32 or 35 at the very minimum to go for chartership. This is a safeguard for our profession so we do not get a whole load of very clever people coming out of university immediately going for chartership. We need to see that practical side as well.

Q520  Mr Chaytor: Going back to universities, can you tell us about your relationship with universities? You have signed a memorandum with the Environmental Association for Universities and Colleges?

Mr Foster: We did.

Q521  Mr Chaytor: What is the impact of that?

Mr Foster: I very much see that we have to work very closely with universities and colleges in this country for two reasons. First of all, we need to get the message about the environment across to the academics within it - I think that is absolutely crucial - and I believe in partnership and I believe in working with these people, but we also need to try and capture the students going through university, encourage them to become members of our Institute, and hopefully capture them for life because they will start off as student members of our Institute who will hopefully then allude to going all the way up through the profession to chartership, so I see it as a win/win, working with universities. It also gives the universities an opportunity to pick our brains about what is happening within the environment, so I was very keen to work with the AUC on this initiative.

Q522  Mr Chaytor: In terms of the memorandum, what is the essence of it? Is it largely about advice on estate management, or the curriculum?

Mr Foster: It is promotion of what each other is up to and a good relationship, in that anybody from the universities can link into all the facilities that we have within the Institute, and likewise we can start to go to universities, lecture at universities - whatever else - to promote ourselves but also the need for these students, if they are doing environmental courses, to get the professional body behind them. On this initiative, there are other environmental institutes out there in the arena but none of them seem to want to push forward at that level, and I am very keen that we should.

Q523  Chairman: What dialogue have you had with other organisations like, for example, the Royal Institute of Environmental Health?

Mr Foster: Personally? Not a great deal of contact at all. In fact, none. The only way that institutes like ours and theirs talk to each other is if there is some sort of alliance formed and people want to come along, like the sustainability alliance. Normally institutes do not talk to each other.

Q524  Mr Ainsworth: You talked about an environmental bandwagon. This Committee will think it is good that there is one to jump on to. Who are you worried about?

Mr Foster: I think it is good to jump on the environmental bandwagon provided the wheels do not come off it - that is the problem we have - and I think there are many people out there who wave an environmental flag because they genuinely want to be part of the environment but there are others who wave a flag because they see it is a commercial opportunity for them, and we have to keep the two apart. I am very worried that there are not necessarily institutes but bodies out there who see that the environment is rich pickings for them for the future.

Q525  Mr Ainsworth: But that is good, surely?

Mr Foster: No, you are totally wrong, because they do not understand the messages of it. That is what I am trying to get over to you.

 

Q526  Mr Ainsworth: We will have to differ. I think you are seeking to protect your membership, which is a perfectly legitimate thing to do but we differ. I am sorry.

Mr Foster: That is okay.

Q527  Mr Chaytor: Just coming back to the educational institutions and looking at further education, have you had any discussions or negotiation with the Emerging Sector Skills Councils, or the Learning and Skills Council?

Mr Foster: To be perfectly honest no, we have not, but I would encourage doing that if I was able to.

Q528  Mrs Clark: Taking you back to some of your earlier comments about your relationships with professional partnerships, is your organisation a member of the PPforP initiative?

Mr Foster: I know what you are talking about, and that is the Institute of Environmental Sciences initiative. The simple answer is no, we are not, and we never have been asked to be. However, the IES is one of the constituent bodies that sits under the umbrella of the Society for the Environment, so we work with IES but we have not signed up to that.

Q529  Mrs Clark: Are you considering doing so? Would there be any advantages?

Mr Foster: I do not see any advantage in it. The good thing about the setting up of what is now a four-year initiative of the environmental forum under the Society for the Environment is that all of the institutes that currently operate in the environmental field have had an opportunity to sit round the table for three years now and create this society. Now, it is my belief that, as this society grows and becomes the voice for the environment, there will be other institutes that are not necessarily full blown environmental institutes but which do have a vested interest in the environment like the Royal Society for Chemistry. Where we differ now and where you think I am defending the Institute, I am not. I am defending the profession.

 

Q530  Mr Chaytor: What is interesting is the picture we are getting which is of I do not say huge chaos within the professions but an enormous number of separate bodies each vying to preserve their status and existence - which is Peter Ainsworth's point - and a minimum, if not zero, level of co-operation, so obviously the forming of the Society for the Environment is an important step.

Mr Foster: It goes a long way in this.

Q531  Mr Chaytor: But how do you assess the progress because from us looking at the outside this would appear to be the obvious thing that should have been done many years ago. The separate identity of all the different professional bodies is really holding progress back.

Mr Foster: I agree. Let's compare, say, health and safety. Within that you have the British Safety Council and the Institute of Occupational Study in Health, who are probably the two most dominant players within the safety field now, but we are looking at a 50 or 60 year old profession. If you look at the environment profession which is about 20 years old and imagine that in 30 years' time you probably will have one or two very dominant players in that, what we have at the minute is something in its infancy, very small institutes of only 800/1000 members, who thankfully are part of the Society. What we will have in the future is an amalgamation of these institutes, so there will be very large bodies within the environment that will operate and become the focal point or the conduit for everything to do with the environment. We are in our infancy, in early days, and I am very conscious that the decisions we make in our Institute and in some of the other institutes will mould the way our profession goes in the future. What I am saying is it is absolutely crucial that the people working in this profession have some standards to adhere to, so we do know that the people who say they are environmental auditors are of the right calibre because they have a certain qualification.

Q532  Chairman: Are there any particular skills that you have identified which relate to sustainable development which are not being adequately supported and encouraged by the formal education system?

Mr Foster: I am a great believer that you have to demonstrate what you are doing, so I think there is a need within skills to show some sort of workplace development that you have done to do that. I have not any specific ideas of this but let us suppose somebody wanted to say they were a sustainable development professional, they would have to prove what they had done in order to show that and show how they have taken the whole idea of sustainable development and entwined it within the philosophy of the company they work for, or whatever.

Q533  Chairman: Have you been approached by other professional bodies not primarily related to their professions?

Mr Foster: Yes.

Q534  Chairman: Could you give examples?

Mr Foster: We have worked with the British Safety Council because they want to produce a 5-star sustainability audit regime where companies can apply for the 5-star audit and this will mean that, if they reach that, they get these five stars and that is the acknowledgement that they are at the top of the sustainability ladder. I am comfortable to help them with that because I would rather it was done correctly, and there are a lot of institutes like the British Safety Council - although it is not an institute - bodies who want to work with us, and I am comfortable with that.

Q535  Chairman: Can you see yourselves advising on educational establishments as well?

Mr Foster: I like to think so. This is where the link with the EAUC is very useful.

Q536  Chairman: What about Sector Skills Councils? What sort of relationship have you got with them?

Mr Foster: Very poor, but I wish it was better.

Q537  Chairman: You are probably not alone in that! Finally, will you be contributing to the Government's Skills White Paper?

Mr Foster: We will be, yes.

Q538  Chairman: I am very conscious of the time; we have tried to squeeze a lot into three short sessions today so can I thank you very much indeed for sharing the work that you are doing with us, and we hope very much that our own report, when it comes out from the Environmental Audit Select Committee, will be able to contribute towards more awareness about education on the environment.

Mr Foster: Let me just say that, if there is anything else you need, the Clerk knows where I am.

Chairman: Thank you.