Examination of Witnesses (Questions 340-348)
11 JANUARY 2005
MR PAUL
ALLEN AND
MS ANN
MCGARRY
Q340 Mr Thomas: What do they think they
are doing in CAT?
Ms McGarry: They will come to
deliver a bit of the curriculum. Some primary schools are coming
on their week's residential course down in that area of the world
and we are part of what they do. In the past we used to get certainly
a few schools every summer who were just there for a day out and
it was a nightmare. They just ran around, but it is almost always
focused now. The teachers do want something out of it to do with
energy issues or something relating to what we call sustainable
development.
Q341 Mr Thomas: Would you say that that
has improved over the last few years?
Ms McGarry: It has.
Q342 Mr Thomas: The intelligent use of
CAT by groups in the curriculum?
Ms McGarry: Yes, I think that
is true, but the numbers have gone down.
Q343 Mr Thomas: Has that been driven
by changes in the curriculum or changes in teachers, if you like,
or the profession?
Ms McGarry: I think it is changes
in the curriculum. The tightness of the national curriculum created
a problem in that respect, taking energy out of the primary school
curriculum at one point, and then money, and to some extent health
and safety brought worries. Schools cannot afford to come. They
cannot afford the coaches, they cannot afford the supply cover.
Q344 Mr Thomas: Clearly not every school
child in Wales or England can visit CAT, so what about education
within schools themselves? You also deliver, I believe, training
for teachers. Can you give us an idea how that works? How much
of a take-up do you have there? What effects can you have by training
teachers as opposed to directly dealing with schoolchildren?
Ms McGarry: I think the training
of teachers has to be the most important thing but it is incredibly
difficult to get hold of teachers for more than a short period
of time. We have quite useful contact with Careers Wales at least
to have some funding for training, so they brought groups of teachers
to us, so we will get a school day's length at a time with groups
of teachers. Through the Sustainable Design Award I have found
that because it is almost impossible for the teachers to get out
of school what I am now doing is going into the schools delivering
workshops for the students but that is training the teachers at
the same time because they are sitting in on the same sessions.
That is one of the only ways we get to them, and you have to offer
training at weekends, things like that. I do not really think
it is right for teachers, who work incredibly hard, to have to
give up their weekends. It is not very good to have exhausted
teachers spending their weekends working and then going back to
teach another week in school but it is one of the only ways to
get time with the teachers to do things.
Q345 Mr Thomas: If you take the average
teacher, thinking about recycling as making a great contribution,
how long does it take he or she to come up to what you would think
is an acceptable level of knowledge of sustainable development?
How long would you like to get them there? One day, two days,
three days?
Ms McGarry: At least two days.
We did run courses for teachers. We gave up on it some years ago
because they just were not coming. Then we tried doing it again
in more recent years. I have accepted now that most of the people
who are going to come with us on courses are people who work with
teachers rather than teachers themselves, so people in other organisations.
Q346 Chairman: To what extent do you
work with universities where you have got teacher training? Given
that the emphasis has been on leadership throughout the whole
of our session this afternoon I am just wondering whether or not
those are for those taking up sport or similar teacher training
groups where there is quite a lot of leadership involved and that
might be applied across the board and how that might be a package
to, if you like, bring in people at the formative stage of teacher
training.
Ms McGarry: We would think that
was vitally important but we are getting fewer teacher training
institutes now coming to visit us because they have got less time
with the students and the students are poorer. They have not got
the money to pay for the visit and the students have not got the
money to pay for it either and they have not got the time. Bangor
University science team are an exception. Every year they bring
their science students and they are the only teacher training
institute that comes every year now. Again, at Bangor there is
this project that has come through development education and that
is opening up some doors as well.
Q347 Mr Thomas: There has recently been
a Channel 4 programme called The End of the World As We Know
It which has featured CAT. Did you see that because I was
interested, if you had, if you could give us some of your comments?
Mr Allen: We have had a lot of
feedback from people who have seen it and I was there when they
filmed it, but it was broadcast at 2.30 in the morning on S4C,
so I have not yet seen it. One of the most important things that
came out of it for us was the reinforcement of our general concern
that people know that we have to make various different lifestyle
changes to move towards sustainability but you can put numbers
against that. You can look at what is the reduction in your fossil
fuel footprint through choosing to fly on holiday locally and
so forth, and people do not have any real perception of how big
a change in your carbon footprint the relevant different lifestyle
choices make. We have developed a tool called the Carbon Gym which
is using the metaphor of a gymnasium where you go for your carbon
health check. We did this to Marcel Theroux and I think it was
a bit of a revelation for him to realise where the big savings
can be made. We do not spend lots of time worrying about lifestyle
choices that are tinkering round the edges.
Q348 Chairman: Notwithstanding that programme,
which I have not seen, do you see much sign of the significant
cultural change that we need to have in terms of people changing
culture, changing leadership to get that culture change?
Mr Allen: I feel that once we
get a real understanding of the science behind the problems that
we are facing that will change people and will change the culture.
Look at another culture change that we had to make: health and
safety at work. We have very strict legislation about what continuing
professional development level of health and safety awareness
different people in different parts of society have to have. We
need a similar rigorous continuing professional development programme
for people at all levels who are implementing sustainability to
make sure that they all are up to speed and current in their understanding
of the problem that they are dealing with through their workplace.
Once that begins to happen, and I can see it rippling around some
areas already, then the culture begins to change, but we also
have to recognise that culture changes in different ways in different
parts of society. One important thing that we have always been
very keen to do at CAT is supporting the community champions,
people embedded in companies, local authorities or communities,
who want to change already because they have it in their heart
to do so. If you enable those people to make the changes that
they want to, perhaps inform them of the relevant merits of the
different changes, they will go back and do that in their societies
and that will affect their neighbours, that will affect their
work colleagues, and it is helping to change, helping to move
in the direction that things are going that I think can be most
cost effective for the limited amount of resources that we can
find.
Ms McGarry: Perhaps I can say
one thing which is not an answer to that question. I have had
a lot of contact recently with really impressive young people.
What we need to be doing much more is listening to young people.
We need to be asking them how they want to be educated, because
they do have very strong opinions on it and very interesting opinions,
and they are capable of taking on this complexity of issues and
seeing the big picture of things in a way that people often do
not expect. All sorts of people get consulted about curriculums
and very rarely do people consult 14-year olds and 15-year olds
and 17-year olds.
Chairman: On that note I think we will
have to draw it to a close. Thank you so much for making the effort
to come here. I hope that when our report comes out it will be
something which will assist all of us involved in this whole agenda.
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