APPENDIX 49
Memorandum from WWF-UK
1. Has the term education for sustainable
development lost its currency? Does it have any resonance with
the general public? Has the environmental message been lost?
WWF-UK believes that Education for Sustainable
Development (ESD) has little resonance among the general population
of education professionals and that the issue is not one of lost
currency, but rather missed opportunities to place sustainability
at the heart of school improvement priorities.
Among those education professionals—in
England and across the world—who recognise the importance
of ESD and address it in various aspects of school life and estate
management, the term is valuable and retains its currency. However,
most education professionals remain unaware of the potential benefits
of ESD. Many educators in England remain unaware that it is a
statutory element of the National Curriculum. Most educators who
are aware of the statutory ESD requirements address them as another
competing curriculum element and estate management consideration,
rather than as an organising concept, around which school improvement
plans and standards can be enhanced.
In our experience, Education for Sustainable
Development has little resonance with the general public as it
continues to be poorly understood and often misunderstood by the
government departments, agencies, schools and organisations charged
with its promotion.
As ESD in schools has been added to the already
confusing mix of environmental education, development education
and global dimensions, it is seen as an additional content area
or an add-on to the geography, science, design technology and
citizenship subject areas. This view emphasises content-driven
Education about Sustainable Development, rather than skill/content-driven
Education for Sustainable Development and fails to develop citizens
for the future. It also fails to recognise that ESD offers an
integrating context for traditional discreet subject areas and
the interdisciplinary fields of environmental education, development
education and global dimensions. As ESD also is not included in
Ofsted school inspections, few schools have taken it on. Finally,
ESD has not been embraced by organisations and institutions offering
post-compulsory or adult education.
WWF-UK, as an environmental organisation, feels
that the environmental message has not been lost, and in most
cases, disproportionately dominates Education for Sustainable
Development.
WWF has been working with and supporting education
professionals since 1981. In 1994, the focus of our school work
shifted from environmental education to learning for sustainable
development, and in 2003, we began referring to our work as Learning
for Sustainability. Our greatest challenge has been building the
capacity schools need to better address the social and economic
aspects of development issues. Because ESD grew organically out
of environmental education, most ESD overemphasises the environmental
aspects of sustainability. The DfES ESD Action Plan is a good
example, which strongly emphasises environmental estate management,
for example, fails to recognise or promote the importance of extended
schools as key contributors to local community sustainability.
2. The DfES said 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?
An immediate benefit could be realised by identifying
those educators, schools and institutions who have used a whole
school approach to develop their ESD practice and offering them
an opportunity to share what they have learned with others.
WWF-UK believes that the most powerful lever
for change is a whole school approach to advancing sustainability.
The whole school approach addresses all aspects of school improvement—from
estate management to learning to links with the community—and
does so in a way that involves the entire school community in
decision-making and learning. DfES has started this process of
change. The next steps would be to build an integrated support
system around this process, including professional development,
capacity building and networking. This support system requires
adequate funding and must address the needs of all current and
future education professionals and school communities.
Since 1994, WWF-UK has worked in-depth with
more than 40 schools to better understand and advance Learning
for Sustainability. These schools developed innovative practices
that focused on many individual aspects of ESD in schools. We
have used what we have learnt to inspire schools to identify levers
for change. We now recognise these as a system of levers that
can be addressed together as; school culture and ethos, including
school leadership; school assessment; teaching and learning; pupil
involvement; community links; and school estate management[8].
Our experience with schools has revealed that the systematic relationships
among these are best addressed through a whole school approach[9].
WWF-UK is aware that the process of change has
begun, but knows from experience that meaningful achievements
will not be realised in one year.
DfES has supported the development of BREAM
standards and ESD curriculum development, among other initiatives
stimulated by its ESD Action Plan. It also has recognised the
importance of a whole school approach and has adapted WWF-UK's
Pathways: A Development Framework for School Sustainability as
an organising structure for the re-launch of its Teacher Net ESD
website.
A whole school approach is important for schools,
as there is considerable untapped knowledge and practice within
schools. Time is therefore needed to improve relationships within
the school, developing a social change process that develops leaders,
reflective practitioners and interactions that are sustained (Fullan
2004[10]).
The Development Framework is designed to release the expertise
and knowledge that lies within the school. It works within the
reality of the school and its locality so that the change that
occurs is sustained.
The DfES have started to lay the foundations
for a more fundamental change process. They are in the process
of re-developing their website so that it can assist schools in
charting a whole school approach, as well as directing schools
to resources and initiatives and providing a space to share schools'
experiences. What remains to be developed is a plan to take these
first steps further over the coming years. Through more than 20
years of experience working with schools, WWF knows that meaningful
change in schools happens slowly and that a long-term commitment
to change is essential.
Through the experience of WWF in supporting
schools, and working with and observing other organisations[11]
that work with schools, we would advocate the need for a long-term
support system to be built that includes, but is not limited to:
— Professional Development on sustainability
and ESD for teachers and education professionals;
— Capacity building in schools through
technical support; and
— Opportunities for practitioners to
network, share practice and continue.
Professional development—both initial
teacher training and continuing professional development—is
fundamental to the lifelong learning required by Learning for
Sustainability. However, a range of professional development opportunities
are needed to support the wide range of activities that advance
Learning for Sustainability. Professional development for teachers
and curriculum managers is an important as professional development
for school leaders and governors. At the present time, there are
limited professional development opportunities for ESD available
in the UK, outside those offered or being developed by WWF.
The ongoing need for current information and
consultation with other professionals engaged in Learning for
Sustainability is a characteristic of the emerging understanding
that this is a journey, rather than a destination. In the past,
this technical support was available from organisations like WWF
and others. In the future, this support should be offered by the
emerging community of professional Learning for Sustainability
practitioners. In the interim, this technical support will likely
come from a combination of the two.
Another support system element is easy access
to a wider range of classroom teaching and learning resources.
Although many educators embrace Learning for Sustainability, few
have the time or funds to develop the resources themselves. As
the interest in ESD has grown, so have the number of resources
and initiatives to support schools' Learning for Sustainability.
Today teachers have easy access to these. Their greatest challenge
is sorting through the many offerings to identify which best meet
the needs of their learners and the learning objectives they are
working toward. The new website on Teacher Net is taking steps
in order to assist this area of the schools support system.
WWF would be happy to provide additional evidence
on what this looks like and the lessons we have learnt.
3. 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?
The UK Sustainable Development Strategy should
emphasise the critical and complimentary roles of learning, social
system sustainability and governance in social change that advances
the strategy's sustainable development goals, and should articulate
roles for all government departments to advance education for
sustainable development.
WWF-UK has submitted a response to Taking it
On, the UK consultation for the Sustainable Development Strategy.
The following is an extract from that response.
Social change and Learning
The UK sustainable development strategy needs
to resolve two related challenges, which have not begun to be
addressed in the current strategy. Firstly, how can a strategy,
which is essentially developed for government, deliver sustainable
development, which requires radical changes in the behaviour of
society as a whole? Secondly, if significant cultural changes
are needed, how should government lead or support such cultural
changes?
WWF believes that the question of cultural change
for sustainable development and the process of developing a UK
sustainable development strategy need to be seen as one single
challenge. The development of the UK sustainable development strategy,
and this consultation itself, appear to be following a largely
traditional planning approach. The strategy is being developed
over an extensive period, with experts weighing the merits of
hundreds of consultation submissions; this process will be followed
by a separate five year implementation period.
The sustainable development strategy could instead
be seen as an ongoing process, in which there is no presumption
that a definitive five-year strategy can be developed through
consultation and then implemented. It could instead be built around
a learning process, in which the best understanding of effective
sustainable development solutions is constantly being updated
through a learning process, engaging all of society in the development
of the strategy through action. This process would offer the chance
to move beyond consultation towards participation, building the
required cultural change through real on-the-ground action, rather
than inviting the usual suspects (such as WWF) to contribute to
a strategy from which the vast majority of people are disengaged.
This requires a different approach to the management of sustainable
development initiatives. Adaptive management based on a culture
of learning is required within all levels of government and should
be encouraged with all other organisations or groups that engage
in delivering sustainable development initiatives.
Such an approach requires a different view of
leadership for sustainability and a different approach to the
rights and responsibilities of sectors of society engaging in
sustainable development. Consequently government needs to be creating
the governance systems that would move the current approach from
one of measuring national government effectiveness on specific
initiatives to measuring new objectives of facilitating engagement
and the enabling of sectors and civil society.
Leadership for sustainability requires transformative
leadership styles and skills and can come from any level of society.
These leaders need to be identified and supported in their work.
It is important not to confuse these leaders with innovators or
pioneers (about 25-30% of society) who are often not in mainstream
society and can often not be identified as a coherent group large
enough to enable cultural change. Ultimately, in order to reach
a "tipping point" for changing behaviours we need to
be working with modernists (ie the 50% of society whose values
mean they are most comfortable living within the bounds of modern
life, are peer pressure driven, and where the value-action gap
is most obvious). The task is to take the learning, ideas and
innovations from the pioneers, transform them and enable take-up
within sub-groups within the modernists group. It is important
to note these sub-groups are also not uniform in their needs,
values, motivations or lifestyles. This is the reason why large
society-wide environmental campaigns haven't worked, and why more
targeted health and population campaigns around the world are
working.
This is why separate strategies for "changing
consumer behaviour" or "promoting a sustainable development
culture" do not work. The consultation looks at communities,
business and education systems as sectors, with strategies seeking
to change behaviour through engaging with the perceived characteristics
of these sectors as a whole. An effective strategy needs to go
beyond this, actively engaging the "sustainability innovators"
and opinion formers in society— who frequently have roles
and interests across different sectors—enabling them to
define solutions and to bring these together into a coherent UK
strategy for sustainable development.
These "solutions" need to run the
full gamut from pilots, demonstration projects to changes within
systems by removing barriers and building the capacity building
systems required to engage more people and sustain their efforts.
By following this approach government will be able to move from
needing to know all the answers to our unsustainable lifestyles,
to a partnership with society which allows them to work out the
solutions. This is also part of the cultural change required.
Statutory regulations by central government
can support this process by requiring interactive participation
in planning at lower levels of government, providing a channel
for the innovators to make a difference. For example, the Living
in a Finite Environment Programme in Namibia showed how highly
successful community natural resource management approaches can
emerge from a national policy requirement for interactive participation.
Government's role in cultural change is also
fundamentally about leading through example, and this should be
built into the sustainable development strategy. Consumption patterns
change through a mix of economic incentives and evolution of cultural
norms. Economic incentives are directly shaped by government;
cultural norms are far more difficult to shift, but are susceptible
to influence by example. Policies in areas such as timber procurement
and energy efficiency of government buildings are important sustainability
issues in their own right, but should also be developed in the
sustainable development strategy as having an additional value
in the promotion of pioneering models. The key point is that the
sustainable development strategy needs to outline the active steps
in taking advantage of this, engaging groups outside government
to change their practices.
4. 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 should the
white paper say about ESD?
There is no reference to ESD, sustainable development
or sustainability in the 14-19 Working Group's report. Nor is
there any mention of environmental awareness or issues to be included
in the curriculum (neither core nor main learning).
ESD will not be adequately represented in any
forthcoming White Paper based on this report as it does not figure
here and is clearly not on the agenda of the 14-19 Working Group.
WWF-UK considers that ESD needs to be embedded
in to the heart of the 14-19 Curriculum and Qualifications Reform
and not be placed as a post-publication add-on. This is because
ESD is a concept with the capacity to integrate the knowledge,
skills, values and attitudes that will enable students to become
active citizens and life-long learners. The omission of ESD from
this report is especially unfortunate as there is a growing awareness
amongst employers of the need for employees with the flexible,
systems thinking, creative skills which engagement with ESD produces.
5. 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?
WWF is aware of the DfES-supported work that
subject associations are doing to create ESD exemplars in the
statutory subject areas, but recognises that this is only a starting
point in the process of embedding ESD in the school curriculum.
WWF has extensive experience working with teachers
and education consultants to develop curriculum materials that
support Learning for Sustainability. Our own materials use interdisciplinary
approaches to address sustainability topics. We have found that
this approach more closely resembles the real world experiences
of learners. These approaches benefit from team teaching that
combines individual and group learning strategies in which learners
have a role in directing and assessing their own learning. We
remain cautiously optimistic that the materials currently being
developed by the subject associations will utilise similar research-supported
approaches.[12]
6. 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?
WWF does not work in this area and offers no
response to this question.
7. Is there any evidence to suggest that
the government is getting better at getting the environment message
across to the general public? In particular, is there any evidence
to suggest that sufficient work is being done at regional and
local levels to support environmental education?
WWF offers no response to this question.
8. Are there sufficient resources available
to deliver against the government's commitment to education for
sustainable development in light of the loss of the landfill tax
credit scheme and the loss of the education criteria from DEFRA's
environmental action plan, for example?
WWF believe that there are not sufficient resources
committed to Education for Sustainable Development.
While the loss of these funding sources further
threatens schools' abilities to address statutory ESD requirements,
available funding for ESD has been and continues to be insufficient.
ESD has largely been an under-funded mandate that depends on the
efforts and resources of non-governmental organisations and the
tireless dedication of a small group of education professionals.
There are 18 national strategies or action plans
for ESD around the world.[13]
Many of these have developed funding strategies for plan implementation.
November 2004
8 This history of experience can been seen in "One
School at a Time-A decade of Learning for Sustainability",
Hren, Jackson, Duggan, WWF-UK 2004. Back
9
A whole school approach: Each school has different approaches
to the ways in which they communicate and make decisions. A whole
school approach will bring together all-or an equitable representation
of-stakeholders, based on equity and accountability, using democratic
principles of transparency and participation. This enhances the
potential for the school community to govern themselves and strengthen
the variety of relationships that exist. Pathways: a development
framework for schools sustainability, Hren and Birney WWF-UK 2004. Back
10
www.nsdc.org/library/publications/jsd/fullan241.cfm Back
11
Information can be made available of these organisations, including
Worcestershire LEA, RBWM, GEM-K, Back
12
Closing the Achievement Gap, Liebermann and Moody, 1997. Back
13
Personal communication, Dr Daniella Tilbury, Mac Quarie University,
Sydney, Australia, November 2004. Back
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