Examination of Witness (Questions 620-639)
19 JANUARY 2005
DR DAVID
LAMBERT
Q620 Chairman: First of all, in that
discussion, did the subject of it being published by DfES come
up at all?
Mr Lambert: I asked at the end
of the meeting whether I could publish it and there is no problem
about that, so the GA is looking at possibilities, but I have
no funds to do that.
Q621 Chairman: Would you have hoped that
the DfES would publish it?
Mr Lambert: Yes.
Q622 Chairman: Do you know why they have
not?
Mr Lambert: No.
Q623 Chairman: With regard to the findings
of your report, what relevance do they have, in terms of our inquiry
currently?
Mr Lambert: I think the idea of
doing what we call a needs analysis was to drill down a little
bit more on what was well understood, which is that Education
for Sustainable Development has not really happened yet in a widespread
way in schools and, according to surveys, teachers said that they
needed help. I think we needed to draw down a little bit more
about that. One of the things that we have learned from that inquiry
is that teachers need to make sense of the area themselves. It
really is not appropriate, I think, to put material on a website
and hope that somehow it will have an impact across the system.
Sustainable development itself is quite a complicated idea, it
is also contested. If you are going to work with that in your
subject, you have to converse and have a dialogue about how your
subject contributes and where it can take you. I think sustainable
development is rather like an educational goal. It is where the
education project can lead you to an understanding of how to address
some big issues which all of us have to face, but I do not think
necessarily that it can be delivered in a mechanical way, teachers
have to work with it within their subject communities. That is
one of the things I learned from the inquiry above all. I would
just like to emphasise, I would not want to drop the term "sustainable
development" for one second. I noted that was one of your
earlier questions. I think it is a very powerful term but it will
take time for it to become established and grow and develop as
a curriculum goal.
Q624 Chairman: Would you expect your
report perhaps to be essential introductory reading for the new
Minister?
Mr Lambert: I think it would be
helpful, yes. It shows that this is a complex and long-term process
in which we need to get involved and teachers need time to do
the creative work which will underpin successful practice.
Q625 Chairman: In terms of the outcomes
of your research, do they support the general direction that DfES
is taking at the moment in respect of their current activity and
their plans for supporting the Action Plan and support for teachers?
Mr Lambert: The support, for example,
which is coming through the QCA website is fine. I think to have
materials which are accessible and current and developing at that
sort of level is fine, but it is not enough. It is necessary but
it is not sufficient. That sort of policy level of support for
teachers needs to be matched by what my Association refers to
as local solutions, where teachers on the ground can interact
with the good practice which is being portrayed at a certain level,
the Plan itself, but make it happen locally with regard to local
context and local pupils and local priorities and all that.
Q626 Mr Ainsworth: Can we touch just
briefly on what may be a bit of a chestnut but it is the debate
about the name of all of this, whether there is actually
a difference between Education for Sustainable Development and
environmental education. There is a feeling in some quarters,
I think, that you can call it environmental education and you
are not dealing with social and economic issues which are important.
Do you have a position on that, as an organisation?
Mr Lambert: We do not have an
official, published position yet, but we will have one shortly.
Our annual conference will take place at the end of March and
Jonathan Porritt will be one of our speakers and we hope to use
that occasion to announce our own organisational policy position
on ESD. More broadly though, speaking for my Association, I would
say that we see a very significant difference between environmental
education and sustainable development. We support the move towards
sustainable development because it incorporates the connectedness
of social, economic and environmental concerns in a way which
often does not bring easy, visible solutions, it brings to the
educational experience a lot of dilemmas, a lot of complexity
and a lot of uncertainty. That is why at an earlier stage in these
debates the GA pointed out that the pedagogies which teachers
need are themselves quite complicated and advanced. This is another
reason why publishing a Plan and rolling it out from the centre
is not enough in itself, because teachers need to engage in some
quite hard work, for example, designing lessons, where children
and teachers are comfortable with a complex, uncertain outcome.
Education is not asking a question and providing some answers
which can be learned, it is not like that. This takes hard work.
This is extremely complicated teaching, where you have got 25
teenagers who themselves need controlling and organising, and
so on, and you are asking them to engage in difficult, unclear,
uncertain outcomes with a very strong futures orientation. This
is ambitious, tough teaching and it will not just happen.
Q627 Mr Ainsworth: Is the idea of environmental
change and sustainable development part of the geography programme
of study and is it a statutory part?
Mr Lambert: Yes.
Q628 Mr Ainsworth: For how long has that
been the case?
Mr Lambert: Since the launch of
the National Curriculum.
Q629 Mr Ainsworth: So right back to the
very beginning. Does Ofsted report on the extent to which these
issues are being taught?
Mr Lambert: They do not publish
reports in that level of detail, no.
Q630 Mr Ainsworth: Are you aware of whether
or not they look at it?
Mr Lambert: I am not in a position
to say; in my experience though, not systematically. I think that
must be a question for Ofsted.
Q631 Mr Ainsworth: I see from your evidence
and the Executive Summary of the survey that your focus groups
thought geography was the subject in which ESD could be embedded
but that the teachers felt themselves to be marginalised in the
curriculum and, it went on, "may not fully acknowledge the
potential of ESD." Why should geographers feel so marginalised?
Mr Lambert: Since the launch of
the National Curriculum, I think there has been a range of developments,
I suppose one would call it the standards agenda, which have taken
place, which have given more and more emphasis to core subjects,
for example, and, not intentionally, it is almost like the
law of unintended consequences, you marginalise others. I would
say that, what I like to call the humane subjects, geography and
history and some others have felt at the end of the queue when
it comes to CPD, at the end of the queue when it comes to funding
sources within school and outside school, and curriculum time
has been under serious pressure, particularly in the primary school.
In the late nineties, indeed, teachers were told that they need
not bother with geography and history for the time. That has been
dealt with, but it does send a signal as to what is the most important
thing. When it comes to league tables which are published and
exam. results in relation to SATs scores, for example, in the
core subjects, it seems obvious to me that if a school is looking
at its image in the local community it has got to get that right
and it will divert resources to getting those right.
Q632 Mr Ainsworth: I have heard this
argument many times before and I am very sympathetic to it personally,
but also I suspect that if I had a dialogue with a maths teacher
or a physics teacher or a chemistry teacher they would say exactly
the same thing only the other way round?
Mr Lambert: Actually, I would
be quite surprised if that were the case.
Q633 Mr Ainsworth: The status of geography
then within the educational world, is this potentially a problem
for geography as a delivery vehicle for ESD?
Mr Lambert: Yes. As I was saying
right from the beginning, geography as a school subject I do not
think is necessarily understood well, in terms of its full educational
potential, and by that I mean serving the goals of sustainable
development. Geography is in a weak position in the curriculum,
so I think, yes, I would agree, there is an issue there in terms
of this sustainable development agenda.
Q634 Mr Ainsworth: Have you seen any
improvement in the curriculum with regard to ESD in the last 12
months, since the Action Plan came in, effectively?
Mr Lambert: Yes. There are some
good examples of extraordinarily interesting practice out there.
We might go to them and experience this for ourselves and it would
be uplifting and very reassuring. It is a bit like a bishop who
believes that church attendances are very healthy. They are when
he visits. As a general issue, I think it is in a weak position
and that teachers need support. What I would argue for is some
examples which have been enacted locally by people on the ground
which are interesting and exciting and can be communicated to
a wider audience, so that we get an idea that this is what you
can do in school, you do not have to wait for someone to tell
you, you can do it.
Q635 Mr Ainsworth: Sure; but, on the
other hand, there is a dialogue going on, I believe, between Government
and others, including yourselves, according to their memo., about
tweaking the curriculum to get ESD more fully bedded in, to use
that expression. They tell us that they have been working with
you, amongst others, in developing primary and secondary units
within design and technology, science, citizenship and geography.
You must see that as a positive development?
Mr Lambert: Absolutely, and I
acknowledge that. Those are appearing on the QCA website and this
is good, I am not saying it is not, but it is not sufficient,
I think, if you really want a long-term strategy to get this embedded.
Q636 Chairman: Can I come in, just quickly,
on the QCA website, because I understand that will be subsumed
after March into teachernet. Do you think that is a good move,
or will it make it less accessible?
Mr Lambert: I think my jury is
out on that. Really I do not know. On the one hand, I think it
is a shame that a website which is steadily becoming known then
disappears. On the other hand, it may be that the next site is
more accessible, more central for teachers. I would have to have
an open mind on that.
Q637 Mr Ainsworth: Do you think that
unless ESD becomes part of the formal Ofsted inspection framework
it is never going to get the sort of attention from teachers,
or indeed from almost anyone else, which it deserves?
Mr Lambert: I suspect I would
agree with that. I wonder whether the problem is not even more
fundamental, in a sense. I mean by that, I think the Tomlinson
inquiry was mentioned earlier and ESD does not feature at all
in the Tomlinson Report. My view of those reports is that, in
a sense, they did not really look at any educational aims. Perhaps
that was not their remit but, the thing is, if you do not look
at what the goals are, what you are doing this for, then things
like ESD will never really get mentioned. In some sense, I think
education is in a rather impoverished state of being, because
we are very, very interested in mechanisms and structures and
perhaps sometimes we are losing sight of what it is all for, which
kind of people we are trying to produce through the school system.
Those are the fundamental questions at this level, but also I
think on the ground as well, and I would like to engage geography
teachers and science teachers and D&T teachers with questions
about what is worth teaching as well as "How do we do it?"
Q638 Chairman: Given what you have just
said about educational goals and given the Schools Bill which
is going through the House of Lords at the moment, it is just
about to start evaluation, and also looking at the Tomlinson Report,
I am just wondering, in view of what you have just said, whether
or not you are aware of any research which DfES is commissioning
or looking into to support the future development of the Action
Plan in respect of how it relates to the curriculum?
Mr Lambert: I am not aware of
any, no. That does not mean to say there is not any.
Q639 Chairman: I think, if you were aware
of it subsequently, we would be very interested to hear from you
about that?
Mr Lambert: Yes.
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