The Scope of the Inquiry
1. On 1st November 2004, we announced
our intention to appoint a Sub-committee on Environmental Education
which would hold a follow-up investigation into an earlier inquiry
undertaken by us, entitled Learning the Sustainability Lesson[1]
. The Sub-committee on Environmental Education was established
on 17th November 2004 and began taking evidence on
7th December 2004.
2. In our press release, we expressed a desire to
hear responses to the following questions:
- Has the term Education for
Sustainable Development (ESD) lost its currency? Does it have
any resonance with the general public? Has the environmental
message been lost?
- The DfES said in 2003 that the Sustainable Development
Action Plan was supposed to signal the start of a process of change,
identifying the most powerful levers - what can be achieved immediately
and what can be built upon. More than a year on, can it be said
that that process of change has begun and have there been any
immediate achievements?
- Government is currently reviewing the UK Sustainable
Development Strategy. What should the Strategy include in order
to significantly strengthen the role of learning within it?
- Does the 14-19 Working Group's report, "14-19
Curriculum and Qualifications Reform", go far enough?
Will ESD be adequately represented if this report is used as
the basis for the forthcoming White Paper? What must be included
in the White Paper if progress is to be made to fully integrate
ESD into all aspects of learning, formal and informal?
- In response to our last inquiry the DfES said
they recognised that more could be done to embed ESD in the school
curriculum and that they would lead on strengthening ESD links
within geography, design and technology, science and citizenship.
Has there been any discernible improvement in these areas? Is
there evidence that this work has been taken forward by the DfES
and its agencies?
- The role of informal learning, including youth
work, work-based learning and adult and community learning, in
taking the environmental education agenda forward is key. Is
the Government doing enough in these crucial areas?
- Is there any evidence to suggest that the Government,
through its stewardship of education, is getting better at getting
the environmental message across to the general public? And is
there any evidence to suggest that sufficient work is being done
at regional and local levels to support environmental education?
- Are there sufficient resources available to deliver
the Government's commitment for sustainable development?
3. Seventy-five memoranda were received, some of
which were supplementary to evidence sessions. Oral evidence was
heard from fifteen individuals or organisations, including Derek
Twigg MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools,
Department for Education and Skills (DfES) in his first appearance
before a Commons Select Committee. We are grateful for all the
evidence given to the Sub-committee during this inquiry. In particular,
we would like to thank our Special Adviser, Libby Grundy MBE,
Director of the Council for Environmental Education (CEE), for
her assistance.
4. We had looked forward to returning to the subject
of environmental education. The DfES' response to our first inquiry
had been very positive, with the Rt. Hon Charles Clarke MP, then
Secretary of State for Education and Skills, taking a personal
interest in taking forward Education for Sustainable Development.
The creation of the DfES Sustainable Development Action Plan (SDAP)
was a direct result of our first report and we were eager to see
what impact the Plan had made in the intervening period. The
UK Sustainable Development Strategy was also being reviewed, with
a revised Strategy due to be published around March 2005. This
year (2005) also marks the start of the UN Decade of Education
for Sustainable Development. The time was right, we felt, to revisit
this subject and evaluate the progress being made.
5. However, what became clear over the course of
this inquiry was that our expectations had been too high and our
optimism premature. Whilst we found some excellent pockets of
progress, and certainly evidence of increased activity, the overall
picture was patchy and disappointing. The question of whether
or not our expectations had been unrealistically high, with regard
to the SDAP in particular, we will return to later in this report.
Of more immediate concern, however, was the worrying degree of
disagreement, whether openly expressed or unknowingly implied,
about the value of ESD and the priority it should be given by
DfES in general and in the curriculum in particular. We heard
from a few witnesses who quite clearly thought it unreasonable
and unrealistic for us to expect ESD to have featured in the Tomlinson
Working Group's final report, "14-19 Curriculum
and Qualifications Reform",[2]
(hereafter the Tomlinson Report). Similarly, we were told there
was no reason why ESD should be included in the forthcoming DfES
White Paper, to any greater degree than any other single subject;
and as for expecting priority to be given to ESD as a classroom
subject, this was, it seems, another naïve assumption. This
is a fundamental issue and therefore we have decided to begin
this report by asking the question, "Do we need to be educated
about Sustainable Development?".
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