UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 84-ii House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE ENVIRONMENTAL AUDIT COMMITTEE (ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION SUB-COMMITTEE)
Tuesday 14 December 2004 DR ANDY JOHNSTON MR JOHN BAINES and MR GLENN STRACHEN MR TREWIN RESTORICK and MS ALEXANDRA WOODSWORTH Evidence heard in Public Questions 100 - 201
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Environmental Audit Committee
(Environmental Education Sub-Committee) on Tuesday 14 December 2004 Members present Joan Walley, in the Chair Mr Peter Ainsworth Mr Colin Challen Mr Simon Thomas ________________ Memorandum submitted by Forum for the Future
Examination of Witness
Witness: Dr Andy Johnston, Head of Education and Learning, Forum for the Future, examined. Q100 Chairman: Welcome, Dr Johnston. Thank you very much for coming along and giving evidence to us this afternoon. If we can move straight into our questions, we are very pleased that Forum for the Future is able to contribute and that you see this inquiry as being a very important follow-up to our previous inquiry on education for sustainable development. We just really wanted to kick off by asking you to elaborate really on what you say in your written evidence to us about the term "education for sustainable development" not having "lost currency, but lacking any coherent meaning". I wonder if you could elaborate on what you mean by that. Dr Johnston: I think what we mean by that is that there is the potential within the debate about education for sustainable development for confusion, if you like. There are some schools of thought which argue that education per se, education itself, if done well, is education for sustainable development. I would not necessarily disagree with that, but what I would say is that in terms of us being able to change the education sector so that education for sustainable development is achieved more quickly, then a more directive approach is required, so the thinking needs to be: what is the type of education which actually is most likely to deliver sustainable development at some point in the future? Therefore, the test is not necessarily the quality of the education; the test becomes whether or not we achieve sustainable development and the line of argument has to work its way back from that future point, a more sustainable world back through the education system and how that needs to change so that it is able to help us deliver that more sustainable world. Q101 Chairman: That really relates, I think, to evidence that we got from Groundwork last week which was really talking about the need for leadership and the need certainly for the Department for Education and Skills to be giving much more structured definitions of the term. Do you see DfES in terms of what you have just said to us actually taking a leadership role at this stage in how it is done at the margins or how it is done at the centre? Dr Johnston: In terms of the area of the education sector which I deal with, which is the post-16 and higher education sector, I think it is fair to say that what DfES has done is it has enabled the agencies that are the prime movers within those areas, for them themselves to come up with that clarity of definition, so within the Sustainable Development Action Plan they have given the Learning and Skills Council and the Higher Education Funding Council the space to come up with that sort of clarity of definition for themselves. I would argue that both of those bodies are very close to having reached that point, so there is an enabling role for DfES which I think they have done quite well. Q102 Chairman: But it is all a bit of a mixed message coming out, is it not? How do you think there could be some really clear meaning to what we mean by "EDS" because it is just not there at the moment, is it? Dr Johnston: It would be helpful were DfES to look at what the Learning and Skills Council and what HEFCE have put into their strategies and to endorse those approaches, those more detailed approaches, if you like, within their own policy framework, but there is a key bit of joining up which needs to happen as part of that process as well which is what happens at schools level. Forum for the Future have been working very hard with LSC and HEFCE to ensure that the messages about models of sustainable development, the logic of education through to sustainable development, timescales and things like that, the organisational change models, et cetera, are knitted together so that both elements of the sector will be doing roughly the same sort of tasks. That knitting together needs to happen with the schools sector as well so that the whole of the education sector is working to the same clear definitions of "sustainable development" and "education for sustainable development". Q103 Chairman: I think that reminds us of a visit that we made to a school in Hammersmith during our last inquiry where some of the things that the schoolchildren were telling us were that the issues that they were wanting to see through their sustainable development education were not being linked up to wider issues, so, for example, where they might perhaps want to see more Fair Trade, the catering policy of the school prevented that from being a reality. Would you say in terms of what you have just said about the need to knit everything up within the schools and the LSC and the other bodies that it needs to go much further than that, that it needs to go much further in terms of wider policy as well so that what people are actually doing in their everyday school environment is not being somehow or another perversely changed in the way that they are involved in the wider issues? Do you see the point that I am trying to make? Dr Johnston: I do. Q104 Chairman: How do you get those to knit together and to reinforce each other so that we do not have mixed messages? Dr Johnston: I do see exactly, and you are right, it does come back to your earlier point about clarity of what we mean about sustainable development, et cetera. There are already out there within local government and within business and community groups accepted models of sustainable development which are needed to actually operationalise any project that you are taking forward, so they are simple and robust enough to take the decision forward. Currently within the education sector as a whole, that simple model has yet to be agreed. At Forum for the Future, we have our proposal in that area and we try to integrate that into LSC and HEFCE strategies, so what we have in those strategies is compatible with the language that local government is using on sustainable development and it is compatible with the language that businesses are using on sustainable development. However, I suppose there is still a gap at the Department for Education level for them to actually come out and say, "Well, this is the 'operationalisable' model of sustainable development which we would like to use". Q105 Chairman: But how can we make sure that we can get widespread understanding that everybody is talking the same language on that? It is partly related to the point you make on sustainability literacy which you make later on in your written evidence to us. Not everyone is speaking the same language and that is part of the problem, is it not, so how can we overcome that? Dr Johnston: For us, a significant part of the key to overcoming that is engaging with the strategic management within the education sector. I am not saying that they have been left out of previous discussions, but there has been a lot of emphasis on education for sustainable development in the classroom and I think that there is a gap in terms of the people that plan, fund and regulate the sector also having their capacity built so that they understand what it is that individual lecturers or course managers are actually trying to achieve within their institutions, so they are able to encourage them, facilitate them and, in the widest possible sense, help them to do that. The advantage of that as well is that these bodies at the higher level within the education sector are the ones who are used to doing the joining up. They are the ones who are used to having to listen, like the Sector Skills Development Agency, HEFCE. They are used to talking to employers, they understand what employers are trying to say and they are the ones who sit on the panels and the committees which actually speak to the police, the Health Service, et cetera. Q106 Chairman: Well, just before we move on from this set of questions, could you briefly just tell us this: in the evidence, you say that "the general public know instinctively that something must be done", and we are really interested to know how you know this. Have you even measured public opinion on this? How much of that instinctive knowledge that the general public appear to have makes it so much easier for us to get across this whole concept of education for sustainable development? Dr Johnston: Well, I suppose I would further define the general public in terms of the staff and students that we are dealing with in the post-16 and higher education sector. We hardly ever, except in an academic debate kind of sense, come across anybody who does not think that sustainable development in its broadest sense is a good idea and something which everyone should sign up for. We are not coming across resistance in that sense, so that leads us to believe that time spent exhorting people or persuading people is actually wasted really. What people are looking for is a way of finding out how it is that they can actually make a contribution themselves. They need to be shown that. The Committee suspended from 3.31 pm to 3.54 for divisions in the House. Q107 Chairman: I just wanted to follow up the last question because in your memorandum to us you talk about sustainability literacy. I know what you mean by "sustainability literacy", but I am not sure how many people do really recognise this term and what real value it does have. I just wonder if you can perhaps elaborate on that a bit. Dr Johnston: The concept of sustainability literacy was borne out of looking at the capacity of the student as the student leaves a course and the capacity of the student that you would like. I go back to my original point which is that what we think we should be looking for is an education process that is more likely to deliver sustainable development at some point in the future, so the capacities that you would like are that the students graduating from the course would understand that the problem they are being faced with is a sustainable development challenge which has these economic, social and environmental components to it, that they have the capacity either to act or to help others to act, and they are able to recognise when a sustainable solution is offering itself and to promote that, facilitate it or reward others for having promoted or facilitated it. Now, the reason we take this approach is because it enables you to build those capacities into every single educational experience. The alternative approach is what we characterise as 'a content-laden approach'. Sustainable development is a chunk or chunks of particular knowledge that an individual must have in order to say that they are sustainability literate; they have got to understand the theory of sustainable development, the Brundtland definition, basic physics, chemistry and biology, and they also need to be grounded in sociology. It does not take you very long before you will scare the life out of anybody who has got to produce some sort of lecture plan or a set of courses around that. Q108 Chairman: But does it have any value if you are talking in a language to those who similarly understand it and not to a larger number of people who have no idea what you and I or anybody else might mean by "sustainability literacy"? Dr Johnston: Where it has its value is if you build the capacity of those people who are developing courses, purchasing or procuring those courses. This goes back to my earlier point that it does not really matter what language you use; you can call it "sustainable development", you can call it "sustainability literacy", "sustainability competency", it does not matter what you call it and if the people in the planning, funding and regulating bodies in the senior management within educational institutions do not know what you are talking about, then of course you are right. Q109 Chairman: Would it not alienate those people? Dr Johnston: It will not make any progress at all, so stage one in all of these is actually to build people's capacity within those leadership positions so they do understand "sustainable development". Q110 Chairman: And that is where you would expect DfES to be showing that leadership, is it? Dr Johnston: Certainly, yes. Q111 Mr Ainsworth: You say that perhaps the most significant thing happening in the post-16 arena is the development of something called "Signet". Dr Johnston: Yes. Q112 Mr Ainsworth: We maybe did not try hard enough, but we could not find any reference to Signet on the DfES website. Can you tell us what Signet is and who is involved? Dr Johnston: I can do. The reason it is not on any website at the moment is because it is a very new idea. It was something which we put in just before we submitted our evidence and the ink is not yet on the contract, yet alone dry. It picks up exactly on the point that I was making in response to the Chairman, that it is all about building the capacity of leaders within the education sector so that they understand more clearly what sustainable development is, so it is a group of bodies like the Leadership Foundation, the Learning and Skills Council, the quality bodies, the Council for Excellence in Leadership, the Higher Education Funding Council, and all of these bodies that plan, fund and regulate the post-16 and higher education sector. DfES has made available to them Forum for the Future as a facilitator for them getting together and discussing this tricky phrase "sustainable development" and also "sustainability literacy". Further to those meetings is that, first of all, they build their capacity and understand what the terminology means, but then obviously the point is that, secondly, they will look at their policies and procedures and their funding mechanisms, et cetera, so that they are actually beginning to facilitate sustainable development within colleges and universities rather than either ignoring it or actually getting in its way. Q113 Mr Ainsworth: So has it yet actually met? Dr Johnston: The first meeting where it was agreed to go ahead happened on November 11th. Q114 Mr Ainsworth: And how many people are going to come along to these meetings? How big is it? Dr Johnston: The rough number of bodies involved is about 15. Q115 Mr Ainsworth: I think it might be helpful if we had a note from you on Signet, what it does, who is involved, what its remit is and what you expect it to achieve ---- Dr Johnston: I can do that, yes. Q116 Mr Ainsworth: ---- since you are the convenor, are you? Dr Johnston: For want of a better word, yes. Q117 Mr Ainsworth: I think that would be very helpful. Can I just move on to another point you made in your evidence which was where you say that in order "for people to do things differently, they need to have the right knowledge and skills", and you say that that does not mean issuing reams of paper or new information, but offering personal tools which people can use. What do you have in mind? Dr Johnston: What we have in mind is variations on the tools that were developed as part of the HEPS programme which was the guidance on how we would integrate sustainability literacy into higher education courses which was a methodology which we also used at a Defra workshop on the new Sustainable Development Strategy. In a nutshell, the thinking around that is to look at the learning objectives of the course as it stands and then with a team of the academics involved and future employers and students, to talk to them and say, "Well, how could you deliver those learning outcomes in a way which enables the students to appreciate the sustainability dimension to it and to be able to recognise what it is that they could do to come up with a more sustainable solution?" For example, if it were an engineering course, which is what we have most experience of, it would not just be a lesson on the civil engineering of bridge-building, but there would also be input from the employers who would be able to explain that in order to put a bridge up somewhere, there is a whole other social and economic set of criteria which the engineer who is involved in it needs to be aware of, so it is not changing what makes a good engineer, but it is just making a good engineer more sustainability literate. Q118 Mr Ainsworth: So it is a kind of add-on to what is done already? Dr Johnston: We try, if possible, to avoid it being additional in terms of what is taught and what is learnt in lessons, and it is more a change in terms of the way. Q119 Chairman: Would you see it more as a foundation to that? Dr Johnston: I would see it that were you able to instil the appreciation within a student that all problems and challenges have an economic, social and environmental dimension to them. Over time you would need to be more explicit about that less and less as you go through the course because it would become something which the students would instinctively understand. Q120 Mr Ainsworth: But they would still need to be able to build a bridge? Dr Johnston: Yes, absolutely. Q121 Mr Ainsworth: I do not think I have quite succeeded in understanding what it is and why you describe it as a tool. It just sounds like a bit of additional curricular information. Dr Johnston: Where it becomes a tool is that if it were curricular information, we would write it down and hand it out to whoever was running, for example, a civil engineering course. However, in reality, all civil engineering courses are slightly different and they have their own nuances, their own particular strengths and weaknesses, so what we would present to the academics running the course is a way of thinking about course development so that they were able to integrate sustainability literacy, so, within the nuances of their own course, they could think up ways that they would add different ways of teaching and elements of the knowledge and skills. Q122 Mr Ainsworth: How widespread is the take-up of this technique? Dr Johnston: It is relatively limited so far because it is a tool which is still in development. We have tried it on four or five universities on four or five courses. It is as prone as any other sustainable development initiative to the fact that the bodies that sit around the university are not tuned into either this tool or any particular tool for making the curriculum more sustainable, so the quality agencies and again the funding bodies, et cetera, et cetera, are not in a position to help to encourage courses to become more sustainable. Q123 Mr Ainsworth: So it is basically like so much else in that it depends on the personal interest and goodwill of various people running various courses in various academic institutions? Dr Johnston: It depends on that, but also encouragement from on top, I would say. Q124 Mr Ainsworth: And is that encouragement forthcoming? Dr Johnston: Not yet, no. Q125 Mr Ainsworth: Just leading on from there actually is the Tomlinson Report. We have had a lot of evidence from people who were frankly disappointed with the Tomlinson Report as it hardly referred to education for sustainable development. You seem to take a rather more positive view - why? Dr Johnston: Because we are natural optimists, I suppose! We are pleased with the fact that the general blending, the more holistic approach of Tomlinson is something which we would applaud, so it is really in terms of its overall direction and the fact that it is so radical as it means that whoever is affected by it will be going through a change process and that is an opportunity to intervene and get sustainable development on to the agenda. Q126 Mr Ainsworth: Yes, but it is an opportunity which will not be taken if it is not specifically required. That is the history of sustainable development, is it not, that it has to be made to happen in order for anything to happen at all and since Tomlinson has effectively blanked it out, I cannot see that your welcome optimism is actually justified? Dr Johnston: I can only hope that you are wrong. Mr Ainsworth: So can I! Q127 Mr Thomas: As well as the formal education sector which we have been looking at, and Tomlinson is particularly concerned with post-16, of course we have also got the whole range of informal, what I think we call these days, "learning opportunities" or youth work, as it used to be. It seems to be a paradox that anecdotally at least these issues come out as ones that the public and young people in particular are interested in, the environment, sustainable development, saving the planet, as it were, and yet it does not seem to be embedded into informal learning at all, into youth work, into the opportunities that people have throughout their lives when they come across institutions in terms of learning. Do you have any idea why that is? Is it that the anecdotal evidence is wrong and people are not interested in these issues anyway or is it that the institutions involved in that sector just are not taking the opportunity to promote education for sustainable development? Dr Johnston: My feeling is that generally it is the latter. With the institutions, again it is not a conscious decision not to promote sustainable development, but it is either a lack of awareness or a lack of capacity to be able to respond to the enquiries from students in a positive and meaningful way. Again you come back to building the capacity of the individuals within the education sector so that they are able to deliver on a demand which is out there, but not necessarily very clearly explained. Q128 Mr Thomas: But can you give us any examples of an organisation or a project in that sector which is engaging people in informal learning and is at the same time getting their attention about some of these issues around environmental education or whatever? Can you think of any examples of where that is actually happening? Dr Johnston: I suppose it depends on how informal you want to take this, but the example that I would give where it does work which the Forum is aware of is around our Masters programme where the Masters students are part of a formal process, but a lot of that formal process is about them doing work-based learning within different sectors of society, within government, business, media, et cetera. When they are in those situations, they are in effect in an informal learning process with the organisations they are working with and their supervisor becomes a mentor and a teacher in terms of sustainable development and capacity-building for them. Where you have that teacher who understands sustainable development, is doing it day upon day and really is able to help the students through, you get a fantastic learning experience. That would be a really good example, I would say, of that informal learning working well. Q129 Mr Thomas: I should declare an interest and say that one of the students has been with me in that way, so I do not know whether he learned anything, but there we are, I accept the principle of what you are saying! Moving on to the Government and whether the Government is getting its message across because there is obviously a leadership role here, in your memo to the Committee, you did refer very specifically to "structural difficulties" that are slowing down or even, you said, "derailing" attempts to change behaviour. I just wondered if you could tell us a little more about what these structural difficulties are and why they should be even derailing attempts because when you use a word like "derail", it suggests sort of an act of will rather than simply just a structural difficulty. It sounds like perhaps people are even taking advantage of structural difficulties in order to put barriers in the way of progress. Dr Johnston: Can I ask exactly what phrase you are referring to? Mr Thomas: The quote I have here is, "structural difficulties that slow or even derail attempts to translate any policy into changed behaviour on the ground", and then you refer to "barriers". Q130 Chairman: It is page 2, the third paragraph, I think: "We are also aware of the structural difficulties that slow or even derail attempts to translate any policy into changed behaviour on the ground". Dr Johnston: Yes, sorry. I think what we are referring to there is what you might call the "project mindset", or the "initiative mindset" within government and the feeling that if sustainable development comes along, that is something they may be able to put a little bit of cash behind and run as a project. Generally, my feeling is that that is not a great approach to any particular thinking that you want to achieve, but if there is one particular ambition that is completely scuppered by initiative and project thinking, it is sustainable development. Sustainable development is all about joining things up and it is all about doing things at the same time, and government joining up, as we all know, is a challenging agenda at the best of times, as is Civil Service joining up. That is what we are referring to as the structural difficulties. If sustainable development is going to happen, core funding streams need to be supporting it, core policy streams need to be supporting it, and the achievement of those core funding streams is very difficult structurally within government as it stands at the moment. Q131 Mr Thomas: So you were really referring to the interest the Government has in specific campaigns rather than a holistic approach to the whole issue. Again I suppose I could ask you, in principle, what would you like to see put in its place to take away that mindset, but also are there examples even at government level where there is a more cross-cutting, holistic approach taken where you would say, "Look at what Defra is doing here and DfES is doing there"? Are there any examples where the Government has managed to get itself out of that straitjacket? Dr Johnston: That is a loaded question! I think the guiding principle is that if the Government is actually very, very serious about it, then getting the message across becomes extremely easy. The difficulty that you have is if the Government is paying lip-service to a particular initiative, then people can tell they are trapped in a public relations exercise. Q132 Mr Thomas: Is that what happens more often than not? Dr Johnston: Well, it is easy to see examples of where it has worked well with things like drink-driving and I think you could put a case forward now that the Government's position on smoking is now becoming so clear that people now very clearly understand what it is that they are trying to achieve as part of this process and then it is communicated to people. That is the way round that it should be, so the Government needs to be very clear about what it means by "sustainable development" in a very clear form and obviously we hope that the next sustainable development policy will clarify things a great deal and then actually get on with implementing it and meaning it and monitoring its own progress in a meaningful way. If it does that, then the whole communication task becomes very easy for them. Q133 Mr Thomas: But where in that communication task does the Government in particular here change information where I think we can accept that the Government is giving out information, albeit maybe in a rather bitty way with lots of different websites which you have referred to as well and lots of different projects? The information is given out there with the idea that that somehow raises awareness and then people change their behaviour, but I think what you are saying is that that is not necessarily happening, so in what way could the Government, therefore, change behaviour if it is not about giving information? Governments are very cautious, are they not, about telling people what to do and they like to say, "Well, we'll give you the information about what would happen if you don't do this", but what about what happens if you do do this and they make you make your own choices? Is that not what the Government is trying to do even though it is a bit bitty, not focused and not joined up? Dr Johnston: Yes, there does need to be clarity around communication, but there are other places where the clarity needs to exist, I suppose, and that is certainly in the policy framework. As I say, the sustainable development policy is a good start and the ideas within that need to find their way into all government policy streams. The Government also needs to be seen to be promoting the tools which enable people to actually change their behaviour and to move on so that people actually have the opportunity to do things differently. Q134 Mr Thomas: What about the Government changing its own behaviour? Dr Johnston: It needs to show a lead on that certainly. Government is potentially a place where a lot of innovation can happen in terms of developing those tools and then they can show the wider public how they should be used. Q135 Mr Thomas: So would you say that they are showing that lead now or does the Government need to do more in its own procurement policy, its own behaviour and so on, its own leadership, if you like, in practical terms not just in information-giving terms? Dr Johnston: I think we have probably all seen the recent report on progress on the Greening Government Initiative. I think it is fair to say that it is a mixed picture, but in policy terms the Government is nearly there, so even if it is not necessarily written down, it does state that it has policies. Where the next steps need to be, in my view, are that the resources need to be made available to actually begin that change. As I said earlier, the tools and the innovation need to be there so that people are actually able to do the sustainable solution rather than find themselves trapped. Finally, the system needs to reward and recognise those people who have been innovators and changed behaviour. Currently, it does not really do the last three. Q136 Mr Challen: Turning to resources, in general do you think there are adequate resources for ESD? Dr Johnston: That obviously is a very difficult question to answer. Again it probably goes right back to the earlier questions from the Chairman, that if the Government had a very clear idea of exactly what it was that it wanted to achieve, so what does a sustainable development education sector look like, you could then plan backwards and say, "Well, okay, how much would it cost for us to change what we have got to do this?" That would be the approach that I would advocate, as I hope this Committee might ask the Government to give some serious thought to, because, in the absence of that, you fund the process without really knowing what outcome you might achieve from it, so it is impossible for me to give a figure. Q137 Mr Challen: I notice from the memo from another organisation we are speaking to later that they thought the resources were actually dwindling and did not seem very confident that they would be replaced. In terms of the shift, do you see an increase or a decrease, and I am also thinking in particular about the Landfill Tax Credit and the impact that will have on ESD. Dr Johnston: I think in the post-16 and higher education sector we see a lot of potential for the huge emphasis that is being put on the Government by leadership. I think we can see that the amount of resource that is being put into leadership within the education sector is also resource that would benefit sustainable development, so there is real potential there, we feel, for that, as I understand it, extra resource which the Government is putting into the education sector under the leadership label, which is all about a better-managed education sector, and I think we would probably all agree that a better-managed education sector is one which is at least contributing to sustainable development, so the two agenda are compatible. Q138 Mr Challen: Is this approach being welcomed generally because normally when we have leadership without extra resources, people get rather sceptical and get demoralised, thinking that perhaps this is not a real priority, just a rhetorical priority? It does occasionally happen in the sphere of politics, that this effect occurs. Dr Johnston: Well, I think there is a fair bit of resource going into leadership. We have several new bodies, for example, HEFCE have a separate funding stream on leadership governance and management which they see as being compatible with the improvement of sustainable development within the sector, and the Council for Excellence in Leadership is looking at the integration of sustainability into leadership competences of senior management and there is money there for courses, et cetera, so there is good potential there. I think where the difficulty is is resource on the ground and the transference of leadership aspirations to actual difference within institutions and that, for me, is where the resource gap exists and is the widest. We are at the point now with DfES, but also with all parts of government, where we are actually looking at implementation and as of yet I am not aware of funding which has been made available for a meaningful implementation. Q139 Mr Challen: You do not see any new options emerging for a secure source of funding for ESD? Dr Johnston: I have not seen any. Q140 Mr Challen: Can I ask what funding you receive from DfES? Dr Johnston: In terms of the amount? Q141 Mr Challen: Yes. Dr Johnston: We are currently finalising it, but it is in the region of £50,000. Q142 Chairman: If I could just press you on this issue of resources a little bit, I was interested in what you said about the need possibly to mainstream funding, but in terms of the money that is there currently, how does that compare with the amount of money that is there for citizenship? Then of course we had the announcement today from the Government about money for sport and I heard very carefully when you said that if the Government wants to do something, it can really do it and make it happen, so how does that square with those other initiatives and how does the sustainable development issue compare with citizenship resources available? Dr Johnston: I am not sure about precise amounts around citizenship, but it is clear that we are talking millions in terms of citizenship and in terms of sport tens of millions, whereas we are talking tens of thousands for education for sustainable development. Q143 Chairman: So you do not see education for sustainable development having a kind of comfortable place inside those other initiatives, inside citizenship and sport, for example? Dr Johnston: I do, definitely, and this is one of the tensions that we are constantly struggling with at the Forum, to what extent do we think that new funding is required to fund a transition of some sort and to what extent should we be saying that because sustainable development is something which everybody should be doing along core funding streams, it is just a case of changing the way that the money is spent and allocated rather than asking for more. Chairman: Well, thank you very much for coming and giving evidence this afternoon. Memorandum submitted by the Professional Practice for Sustainable Development Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Mr John Baines, Chairman, PP4SD Project, and Mr Glenn Strachen, Programme Manager, the Professional Practice for Sustainable Development, examined.
Chairman: Welcome. I think you have sat in and heard some of the comments, and we want really to explore further your views about education for sustainable development and the whole concept. Q144 Mr Challen: You have heard Forum for the Future and indeed in your own memo you believe obviously that "ESD" is still a very relevant term and a very important term and is now recognised beyond the formal education sector. However, some people who have contributed to this inquiry have actually said that it does not have a lot of currency and never did in the first place, so I am just wondering what your response would be to that. Mr Strachen: We have been working mainly with professionals and mainly through the professional institutions, and that is where this project PP4SD is placed. I would also say that both John and myself work full-time on a range of different projects outside PP4SD as well. That is the main project we are working on, but our responses today may well be drawing on our other experiences as well. Q145 Mr Challen: Can I just ask you what you mean by "professionals" because clearly in the education sector there are a lot of professionals from the Civil Service to teachers to ---- Mr Strachen: It is a very broad term. We have been focusing on members of professional institutions, so, for example, the Institute of Civil Engineers, the Royal Institute of British Architects, planners and wise people and so on, but people who actually belong to professional institutions. That is where the project has been focused, but I realise it is a broader term and certainly we would look on lecturers, teachers and so on as professionals as well, and most of them do belong to one form of professional institution or another, so it is primarily, from our point of view, members of professional institutions. Q146 Mr Challen: Have you any idea then of any particular group of people or professional body that perhaps is less interested or not focused on ESD compared to another? Is it something which is really gripping the imagination of some and not others? Mr Strachen: It is probably easier to point to the ones that are more gripped by it in the sense that we have had very good responses from the engineering sector, the construction sector, waste, energy and water, as you would expect. We have more recently engaged with professional institutions in the financial sector with mixed responses. Certainly the Institute of Chartered Accountants for England and Wales, for example, has just produced a very interesting report addressing issues to do with sustainable development. We have also been working with professionals in the land-based sector, people like the British Institute of Agricultural Consultants, the British Institute of Agricultural Engineers and again you may well expect it from the area in which they work that they would be very interested in sustainable development anyway. With regard to those who are less interested, we can really only speak of the ones we have engaged with. Q147 Mr Challen: In your memo you have made narrow reference to the environmental message being in the ESD and perhaps being obviously for us quite an important part of it. I wonder if you could just expand on that a bit. Is our environmental focus, do you think, a little bit too heavy. You say we are missing the point, so I guess you must? Mr Strachen: Well, the point we were trying to make there was that the environmental focus is extremely important, a hugely important factor of sustainable development and environmental education is, therefore, a hugely important part of education for sustainable development. However, as it says in the evidence there, to actually address some of the complex issues of climate change and various other of the complex issues with which we are faced and which professionals face, you need to see how that information, those skills which are associated with environmental education fit within the broader context, so I think it is safe to say that we are limited ultimately by our environment and our natural resources and actual (?) within that with our very active social systems, economic systems and so on, but they have to operate within that larger environmental system, so obviously the environmental message is very, very important indeed, but we will never solve some of those complex issues without being aware of the social messages and the economic messages. Q148 Mr Challen: You do not think that there is a possibility of the danger of losing sight of the environmental message though by broadening the definition too much to allow the economic perhaps to become dominant rather than the environment? Mr Strachen: This is where perhaps I was trying to make the point by saying that we were missing the point. We are the product of the reductionist education system where we focus on one particular subject, a particular profession, whatever, actually to get in-depth knowledge, and I think that is very important and that will always continue, but actually we live in a very complex world and the issues we face, our everyday life is engaged with very complex situations. Many of the problems that we are facing are as a result of being perhaps too narrowly focused on economic issues or possibly even in some cases environmental issues, but it is getting the balance that is important. From our perspective, we would suggest that the whole point of education for sustainable development is seeing the interrelationships between all of these things and yes, we must not lose the environmental message, but in order to step forward and to make a real impact on some of the issues like climate change, we must have that broader perspective, and that is what ESD is trying to achieve. Q149 Mr Challen: Having read your memo, there seems to be a distinction between environmental education and ESD which is maybe a distinction that you do not want to make, but may I ask you what the relationship is? Mr Strachen: Well, I am quite happy to talk about that, but I do not know how much time we have got! There are various forms of environmental education. For example, if we step back a few years, the Government back in the early 1990s issued guidance on environmental education which identified education about the environment, about the knowledge of the environment, about education through the environment, going out to experience it and getting an appreciation of the environment and taking action, education for the environment. There are different forms of environmental education as well as contested forms of education for sustainable development. I would say that all of those forms contribute in various ways to education for sustainable development and I would say that there are lots of examples of environmental education and education for the environment which are almost indistinguishable from what people would call "education for sustainable development". Q150 Mr Challen: Last week Groundwork told us that, "We have not had the leadership and the resources behind education for sustainable development to really put it at the centre of an educational agenda", and that, "DfES needs to embrace the term, 'ESD', and place it at the centre of the agenda rather than at the margins". In your view, is DfES really providing sufficient leadership in this area or could they do a lot more? Mr Strachen: I think that you can always do more obviously. I think the Action Plan was a major step forward. We are speaking primarily from the project, the PP4SD Project, which looks at how to get sustainable development education or help to professionals and so on, and I would certainly emphasise the need to address initial teacher training and in-service training for teachers to help put this at the centre because it is people that make the difference in the end and teachers need leadership. It says in our evidence that if DfES were taking it seriously, it would be up there in terms of Ofsted inspections and perhaps linked into funding in a much more central way, and they would show leadership by setting up initiatives in that way. In Wales, there is an initiative to develop training of lecturers in all of the eight teacher training establishments in the country and that is being done through the ESD and GC Panel in Wales. Q151 Mr Challen: Do you think Defra should be doing more as well? Mr Strachen: In relation to? Q152 Mr Challen: In relation to ESD. Mr Strachen: Generally speaking are we talking or focusing on schools? Chairman: And not just in Wales. Q153 Mr Challen: Defra's Environmental Action Fund has lost its education criteria, for example, to DfES. Do you think that was a good move? Mr Strachen: That is very pertinent to us. Mr Baines: In the past it is Defra which I feel has taken the lead very much on these educational matters and I think it is quite encouraging that DfES is taking much more of an interest now, and our funding for the professionals has always come through the Environmental Action Fund, so we are somewhat worried after what you have just said about education being left out of that because that is what our project is all about and they have funded us for the last six years. The fact that we have been invited to go and see DfES in January suggests that they are taking more of an interest and hopefully this will enable us to bring the initiatives together in a more holistic and coherent way. Q154 Mr Challen: Do these changes affect your work programme at all? Do they threaten anything in the near future or is it going to be a blip that you can get around? Mr Baines: It will do because we are coming to the end of phase two of our project and we have submitted an application with a proposal for phase three which is in 2005, but of course we have not heard anything yet. Q155 Mr Challen: That starts in April presumably? Mr Baines: Yes. Q156 Mr Ainsworth: You said just now that the Action Plan was a major step forward, but actually in your written evidence you are pretty lukewarm about the Action Plan. You talk about the way the training agenda has moved forward a bit, but you say that the Action Plan has not actually been responsible for that. Is there not a bit of a contradiction there? Mr Baines: If you are starting from very little, then it represents a major step forward, I suppose, but its significance is that one is hopeful that it is going to realise the potential and that the various discussions going on will help that. Q157 Mr Ainsworth: What we asked in the question we sent out was whether there had been any immediate benefits. Mr Strachen: This project focuses on trying to get continued professional development out to professionals and the training of professionals was mentioned in the Action Plan, so we were quite pleased to see that. In terms of actually moving things forward with DfES, no, there has not been in the past twelve months since the Action Plan has come out a great deal of movement from our point of view. We have a meeting coming up in January, as John just said, with DfES and we hope that things will move forward there. In terms of the responses we have been getting from the people we have been working with and talking to and so on, it does seem that there is a change over the last four or five years from, when this project started, having to make the case for people to be interested in sustainable development and to want to know more about it and so on to professionals feeling that they need to know about it and they want to know what they should be doing about it. Q158 Mr Ainsworth: And this is the growing demand for training which you mention in your memorandum? Mr Strachen: Yes. Q159 Mr Ainsworth: Are there any particular sectors where this demand is coming from? Mr Baines: Well, we have been working with particular sectors. When we started the project, we worked with engineers, chemical engineers, electrical engineers, waste management, and there is a list here which we can leave with you, if you wish. Since then, we have expanded it and in the second phase we went to the financial institutions and the financial professions and the land-based sector, and both in phase one and phase two we have developed a model of working. These people are interested, but not quite sure what it is they should be interested in, so it starts with a dialogue and we are trying to explore the concept of sustainable development, what it means to them in their profession, and then what are the implications for their members as regards their training and particularly in either their initial training if they are in institutions of higher education or, if they are already working, for their continuing professional development. They have shown an interest in that to the extent that they have been willing to co-operate with us, to give up their time, and in some cases they have put some money into it, but usually it is a question of quite a considerable amount of their own time which they put into the development of it, so by the end of the three years we come out with some training materials which have been tested with their members, sometimes within a professional institution and sometimes within their places of work. For example, we were just working on Friday with all the graduate intake of Barclays Bank, with the financial sector, the possibility of giving master-classes for some of the people higher up in the institutions and so on. Q160 Mr Ainsworth: Do you charge? Mr Baines: Yes, it depends. It is part of the development phase that it is paid for by the grant which we get, so all the development phase is paid for in that way and they make their contribution by giving their time. When we do Barclays Bank, for example, that has now moved on from the development phase and this is a specific course which we negotiate with them and they give us some money to do it, and this helps us to get the matched funding to go with the Defra grant. Q161 Mr Ainsworth: So really we could measure the success of your efforts by looking at your fee income, could we? Mr Baines: No. Q162 Mr Ainsworth: Why not? Mr Baines: Because we are trying to emphasise the development stage and then we put the stuff out into the public domain, so we do not set ourselves up as a consultancy to compete with others, but we do have to earn some money, but that is not the primary objective; the primary objective is development. Q163 Mr Ainsworth: A couple of times you have mentioned waste as an area where you think there has been some progress. We have done a lot of work on waste over the years and recently had a sub-committee looking at environmental crime, fly-tipping and all of that, and also we looked at the levels of awareness, particularly amongst smaller businesses, of environmental regulations and waste regulations, and essentially found that there is an extremely low level of awareness, so it did not strike us as a particularly good model to talk about progress. Mr Strachen: Well, I think you have touched on the important factor there when you talked about small businesses. Naturally, we have found it easier to engage with people who are working for larger enterprises who have an opportunity very often to come along to courses more easily than if working for a small business with only a few employees. Indeed we have developed a proposal, which we hope we will be able to get some support for, for our third phase of the project to specifically look at small- and medium-sized enterprises and how best to engage with them because we are very well aware that it is very difficult to get the message out there and actually to engage with the professionals. There are a lot of professionals who do work within those small and medium sized enterprises. It was brought home to us very much working in the land based sector which is full of very small and medium sized enterprises. It is about innovative ways to reach those people and engage them in the debate and training and get information to them. We have been working with LANTRA who have developed quite a lot of online technology that will work even down a telephone line and just a 56K modem. That will work interactively to get that information out there. How successful it will be I am not sure but we have another meeting in January with LANTRA to explore how our materials could be pushed out further and wider. Q164 Mr Ainsworth: The difficulty is you can set up as many websites as you want. We are not short of websites in this particular sector, but you still need the farmer to say, "I am going to check the environment website today just to make sure that I am keeping up to scratch." It just does not happen. Mr Baines: This is a training model. It is slightly different. You have to provide some incentives as well to do it. Legislation is something they have to learn about and apply. This may be one way that we can say, "If you follow this course it will help you apply the legislation to your particular activity." Mr Strachen: It is definitely not about looking at a website. It is about a method of delivering training and the person first of all needs to say they want to find that information out and do that training. One of the ways forward is what is referred to now as the blended approach, where you have localised meetings combined with online training. Q165 Mr Thomas: I wonder if you could give us your view of the Tomlinson report and what impact that may have on education for sustainable development? The memoranda we have received are split on the matter. Where do you come from on this? Mr Baines: I do not feel qualified to respond on the Tomlinson report that, as I understand it, is more to do with the school based sector. Although I have an opinion, it is not a very well informed opinion and I had better not say anything. Mr Thomas: It might be worth venturing it. Q166 Chairman: You must have some idea because if you are involved with the HE sector and so on that is what happens, what goes before and predetermines the material that you have that comes through. I think we would be interested in pushing you a bit further on that one. Mr Baines: Give me some time if Glenn has something he wants to say immediately. Mr Strachen: I spend about two to three days a week working on the PP4SD project but I do work on other projects including the London South Bank Education for Sustainable Development Masters Programme. I am a former school teacher as well so I take an interest in it. I would support the points that are made in the memorandum. Having taught 14 to 16s, having taught through old-fashioned City and Gilds programmes at that age group towards A levels and so on, I welcome anything that broadens the education that that age group receives and anything that brings the education closer to what young people experience and will experience when they move into the outside world of work. It is positive from that point of view. With regard to education for sustainable development, I am firmly of the view that it is not a separate subject and that the way to introduce it is, as I said in the memorandum, through the subject areas. We need the reductionist approach to education in order to get the depth of knowledge in certain areas, but that has to be put in context, showing young people how that information relates to the world out there and interrelates to all the other things that they are learning. It does not say in the Tomlinson report how that is going to happen. There will inevitably be the argument that has been around for a long, long time that if you broaden young people's education between 16 and 18 they will not have the same depth of knowledge in specific subjects that they would if they just take three A levels and particularly if they take maths, further maths and physics and go on to a degree in maths or physics. Obviously, they are going to have a very strong knowledge to start with and there will be, no doubt, comments from higher education talking about the depth of understanding that people have in specific areas. That has to be open and acknowledged right from the start but hopefully those young people will know how to apply the knowledge that they do have more effectively. What I would really like to think is that they know how to learn more effectively and take responsibility for their own learning more effectively. This all comes back to approach and methodology in education and that is where I would like to see the changes taking place. There we are back to initial teacher training and in-service teacher training. Q167 Mr Thomas: Thank you. You have answered my next question as well to a certain extent. The reason I asked you that is that we did an inquiry like this about three years ago in 2001/2 and the DfES have come back to us this time round saying that all these improvements have happened in the curriculum around education for sustainable development since then. I have the impression from your memorandum that you had not really seen that. Also, in what you said in your memorandum and what you have said now, you really want to see this much more integrated approach. I wonder if Mr Baines can add a little bit to that now. Mr Baines: I agree wholeheartedly. We have had this argument ever since I have been working in environmental education which is now getting on for 30 years: should it be a separate subject or should it be integrated? That argument is finished. It must be integrated, but there is some content which you want to be spread across there. There are some basic things which one must learn. My own view is that sometimes when I go into schools I could be there myself and find it extremely familiar with what I had in my own education. Some of the technology may have changed. I have not seen too many blackboards these days, but the atmosphere, the methodology, what is happening in schools seems to be very much the same as when I was there, when I was bored stiff. I feel it is the system that is not going to be changed. When we talk about education for sustainable development, we are thinking of the education system as well as the subject matter, the skills and everything else, but it is how it is delivered. It is this much more participatory approach, where people are involved in setting their learning agendas and so on. That is what I am perhaps disappointed in, that we are not seeing that move forward into the organisation of the education itself. Q168 Mr Thomas: This is what you meant when you referred to long serving educators who are still wedded to established thinking and practices, I assume? Mr Baines: Yes, something like that. Q169 Mr Thomas: You mentioned in the earlier evidence you gave about the work of the Council for Leadership in running sustainability courses. Is that the sort of way we need to tackle these established thinking and practices? Is "established" another word for "hidebound" in that context? Is it working with these people to change their thinking? It is not simply about resources? Mr Baines: It comes back to the approach which we adopt in our own training. It is a participatory approach. You have to use people's experience and knowledge in their own professional area and their own interests and so on. Our job is really to facilitate with some input of thinking about sustainable development. When we say that, it is the systems thinking, the joined up thinking, to look at things in a different way. You are not sure what is going to come out of it because they are going to look at problems in a different way and come up with different types of solutions. Mr Strachen: Coming back to the work we are doing with the PP4SD project, it is about being inter-professional, getting people from different professions together so it mirrors what is going on in the outside world, enabling them to see issues, problems, from other people's perspectives so that they are not creating a solution as an engineer that is going to create a problem for a waste manager. They are getting the bigger picture. We are not engineers; we are not architects. We work with these people to try and broaden their perspective and help them to recognise that there are other perspectives on what they are looking at. They should not simply look at it as an engineer but as to what the impact of their activity is going to do to other professions and so on. Q170 Mr Thomas: You would think therefore that there may be more scope within the informal learning sector to be doing this because you do not necessarily have the established work practices and it should be perhaps more participatory. You suggest however that that is not happening but I wondered if you could give us any examples of the sort of things happening in that informal sector that are good practice or any analysis as to why that is not happening in a sector that surely should be naturally a bit more participatory based in that way. Mr Strachen: Which sector? Q171 Mr Thomas: Just informal working in general, the learning opportunities people come across in their work place or within the voluntary organisations they are involved in. There are different ways of delivering education for sustainable development. It does not all have to be formal. Learning opportunities can be people going to the WI and finding a different perspective of what is happening in their community. Mr Strachen: People are most engaged when they are doing something important to them or purchasing things. You can think of farmers' markets. Look at the sort of education that might go on there about food, for example. I do not know how it could be done but I think there are tremendous opportunities to inform people about this agenda when they are purchasing electrical appliances? What does A++ really mean? Not only what does it mean but what effect does it have? People are encouraged to recycle but how often are they informed about the whole loop? They might be told that they are preventing things from going to landfill but what about the energy they are saving in glass production if they recycle their bottles and jars and what is the knock on effect with climate change for that? Unfortunately in some respects and fortunately in other respects, the climate change issue has the potential to break through to a huge amount of people in terms of knowledge in this area. A few months ago I was doing some training of sales staff in a particular organisation on sustainable development. I gave them some things to rank including job creation. I did four or five groups and they all rated climate change as their highest concern. I was in one sense pleasantly surprised. Obviously it is not a good situation but I think the message on climate change is reaching out to people quite significantly. There is an opportunity there to build on that concern and do something about it. When people buy houses or cars there are all sorts of opportunities to inform and educate them. Q172 Mr Thomas: People all experience the weather, of course. Mr Baines: Yes. Unfortunately, you need something to underpin what they are learning when they go there. I think it is a great opportunity for them to start putting into practice some of the things which they have learned elsewhere because otherwise there is a huge misunderstanding. They talk about this only producing so much carbon dioxide; therefore, the ozone layer is going to be okay. In other words, a lot of the issues get mixed up and that is just on environment. When you start mixing it with fair trade, sweat shops and things like that, it all becomes a bit difficult for them to deal with. What I have not yet worked out is how you provide them with a basis of knowledge and skills which they can use in the situation when they go to buy the fridge or their new car. How can you get them to link it to their own values? When we were having this course on Friday, we found people had one set of values when they are at home. They are a very good member of the RSPB or something else and then they come to work and they are willing to leave those values at home and apply these other values when they get to work which are to do with the banking industry. We have to get the best deal we can from the cleaners; it is not our responsibility. We will give it to the lowest contractor. They do not understand their own schizophrenia. Q173 Mr Thomas: That could be applied to the government and the House of Commons as well. You have made very clear in your evidence that regional initiatives have been very patchy in England and you have contrasted that, favourably or unfavourably, with what is happening in Wales. Also, you mentioned a couple of initiatives that happened in Wales during your evidence this afternoon. Obviously I am interested in that and I think we all are because of the difference that has been achieved in Wales through devolution and education in particular. Is there anything that you could point to which explains why Wales is doing significantly better than England and particularly the regions within England? Do you work in Wales? Mr Strachen: Rwyln byw ym Mhenuwch. Wales at a policy level and structurally is getting things into place. There is a huge amount of work to do to bring that home to grass roots level and to see change on the ground. My opinion is there is probably a lack of capacity to deliver the good initiatives and leadership that are being shown in the Assembly. The Assembly has adopted the policies and set up the committees and panels to follow that through and is developing an action plan to deliver on lots of areas of sustainable development including education. Q174 Mr Thomas: Is that duty for sustainable development what you see as being the core difference? Mr Strachen: That is what I feel, yes. Q175 Chairman: I would like to thank you for giving evidence this afternoon but there is one final query. It is whether or not you have a dialogue with Defra or the Environment Agency and others, given the work that you do, on the outcomes of your work so that in a way what you are doing can be shared right across the board. If you do not have that dialogue with them, would it be helpful to have it and is there any way you could let us have the details of what you are doing there? Mr Baines: The Environment Agency is one of our partners so we have a continuing dialogue with them and they are very supportive with us. With Defra, we do not have the dialogue quite so much but, yes, there is a dialogue and it would be helpful if we had more dialogue. Mr Strachen: We have had a dialogue on the land based sector initiative with Defra. Q176 Chairman: We are just interested in how we can share what is obviously best practice. If there is anything further on that, perhaps you could let the Committee have it in written form. That would be helpful. Mr Baines: We did bring along the courses which we set. If those are of use to you, I am very happy to leave them here. Q177 Chairman: I think that would be useful. Mr Strachen: All our work is in the public domain and part of the measure of its success is that we have done quite a few train the trainer courses and people can take it away, adapt it and make use of it as they will. Chairman: It was just Defra and the Environment Agency that we are particularly interested in. Many thanks. Memorandum submitted by Global Action Plan Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Mr Trewin Restorick, Director, and Ms Alexandra Woodsworth, Environmental Communications Officer, Global Action Plan, examined. Q178 Chairman: Thank you for coming to the Committee this afternoon and sitting in on the previous evidence. We want to turn from the profession to the sharp end which I know is where your organisation is. In the evidence you have given us, you have said that ESD is not a term that resonates with people's daily lives and that you are well placed to know exactly what terms do resonate with people's daily lives. Can I ask whether or not you feel there is any way that we can sell the sustainability message if it is the case that we are not really getting the message across at the moment? Mr Restorick: If education for sustainable development has lost its currency, you could ask did it ever have a currency in the first place to lose. It does not have any resonance with the general public, we feel, and the environmental message has been lost. We can back those claims up in a number of ways. Sustainable development is such a nebulous term that there are many escape routes that people can charge down to avoid the full environmental implications of the message. We have sustainable airport policies or various other policies which are claimed to be sustainable development policies and it is questionable whether they are, because of the financial component. Because there is a lack of political will behind the whole thing, people charge down the escape routes. Q179 Chairman: How do we sell it? Mr Restorick: We have found the way that students and households understand the messages is by talking about things like environmental limits. They understand the capacity of the earth, for example. They understand specific environmental activities. If you go in on those specific environmental issues, people very quickly start to make the other connections and understand the financial and social connections, which are all part of education for sustainable development. Q180 Chairman: How does the government do that? Mr Restorick: By being more explicit about what it means and would like to see in terms of policy and change. We heard about climate change and the fact that people are seriously concerned about it. We know that we have to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. People understand that when it is put in those basic terms. They also understand that by doing that there are financial and social implications. They start to work through those things but by being explicit, by saying, "We cannot continue to consume carbon dioxide at the rate we are", people understand that. People understand that there is a limited amount of holes in the ground we can continue to put our waste in. They understand the financial implications of transporting it further and the social implications of having a landfill in your nearby area and the social implications of incineration. People make the connections if they are given a specific issue to concentrate on. People understand about finite water resources. People understand about fair trade issues but you have to be specific. The trouble with education for sustainable development is that it is so nebulous and it is in the interests of quite a large number of players to make sure that it maintains its nebulous status so that they can slap the title on the many things that they do and feel that they have addressed it. Q181 Mr Challen: Can I ask about your magazine, Ergo, which I think was fairly recently launched and whether you have done any leadership research to see whether you are hitting the new audiences that clearly it is designed for? Mr Restorick: It has had more relaunches than the government. It is reaching the 18 to 30 age group predominantly and it is reaching predominantly women in the 18 to 30 age group. All the research that we have seen on environmental issues shows that that is one of the hardest target groups to hit. We feel it is hitting a new audience. We have evidence that people buying it are shifting some of their purchasing habits towards things like green energy. To really embed long term behaviour change, we still feel that you need people to participate in social groups and to get more positive feedback but in terms of people who are already on that road or people who are looking for something to get them enthused and engaged and to hit that broad base, that magazine has enormous potential. You just have to look at the way that many companies now, particularly the bigger companies, are looking to keep the loyalty of their customers, people like Vodaphone and Orange. They are using magazines that they are producing to get the messages across that they want to in a very subtle way, to make sure that people that Orange stands for these certain brand values. If we are truly going to hit the mainstream with messages about environmental and social change, we have to start using the methodologies that have proven successful for many international companies. Q182 Mr Challen: We heard from Groundwork last week that they think there is a lack of leadership in DfES. Does that reflect your view? Mr Restorick: I think this Committee did a marvellous job to get DfES to produce an action plan. The action plan was produced in response to this Committee. There is no commitment at all, I believe, within DfES civil servants on this issue. They are being cajoled by their Minister. The Minister has set views at the moment about the way to respond to it and the way he feels they should respond to it is through the creation of a website. The website is being developed. The consultation on the website is being done in a very poor manner and if I was being cynical I would say it is being done in a way so that DfES can come back to this Committee and say, "We are doing this and we are doing it in consultation with other people." Q183 Mr Challen: Apart from resources, what do you think could be done to get some concrete results? You have criticised DfES and the action plan for delivering only limited concrete resources. Mr Restorick: I am in danger of playing buzzword bingo and picking out certain words that we have heard a lot. There is a big question about leadership and desire here. I do not think DfES have the desire to deal with this particular issue. The mantra that is coming out of DfES civil servants when I speak to them is that they want to push the resource down to the schools for the schools to make the decisions about what they want to spend their budget on. It does not correspond with what is happening on things like sport. What DfES do not seem to be willing to take a leadership role on and an understanding of is that, if schools get to the stage where they decide they want to embrace this agenda and they need support to do it, they need an infrastructure that can provide them with that support. They need localised, specific, thought through support. DfES are avoiding that whole particular part of the need to promote environmental education in schools. They are not willing to put any investment in at all, not just resource but also intellectual thinking, support and guidance into the infrastructure that will enable schools at all levels to take the lead in this. Q184 Mr Challen: On top of all that, you mourn the loss of the landfill tax credit and say it is particularly damaging to the voluntary sector and it is going to lead to a reduction in your own work capacity, as I understand it. How much funding did you receive from this source in the action for schools programme? Mr Restorick: In the last year we received around 300,000 for schools work and we worked out as best we can, having talked to the rest of the sector, that the total funding is probably in the region of at least nine million. That has gone. Q185 Mr Challen: In terms of your own programme, have you identified any replacement moneys and, in the wider scheme of things and the nine million, have other voluntary organisations, NGOs etc., been able to see new options emerging? Mr Restorick: We have scoured high and low, as have most of the other organisations we talk to. We have managed to pick up a pittance from some charitable trusts and local authorities and some companies. There is no large source of funding to replace it. There is a new lottery fund aimed at young people and you could, at a really tight squeeze, get environmental education into that, but that is the only source. Q186 Mr Challen: What has the government's response been to this? You have obviously made them aware of your concerns. Mr Restorick: Yes. It has been a fantastic game of pass the parcel. The fact that DfES have taken a lead on this particular issue has been a great opportunity for Defra to throw the ball to them and say, "You run with it." Defra have therefore taken out the environmental education aspect and the environmental action fund, which is one of the few grants that are available to environmental education. DfES have not caught the ball, basically. They have been highly specific in saying that they will not put more resources into these areas. They have been specific in what they wrote in the action plan and in conversations. Q187 Mr Ainsworth: You obviously do not feel the need to be polite to the government any more, judging from your remarks this afternoon. Within the context of the informal learning agenda, we had a question on that and your answer was quite interesting because you picked up on the Carbon Trust scheme to tackle climate change. You appear to be critical of it because it was focusing on technological solutions rather than training to change behaviour. Surely, if the net result is that businesses reduce their climate change emissions, that is okay, is it not? Mr Restorick: It is okay to a point. If you get businesses to make changes which reduce their direct emissions, that is absolutely fantastic. That frees up more resources for other things. If people within the business do not understand the big picture, it may well be that they are making certain carbon savings on their direct emissions but their indirect emissions are increasing because they have not understood the whole importance of reducing carbon dioxide across the wider remit. Technological changes are great but we are getting more and more companies coming to us saying, "We have done the technical fixes. We have the most elaborate boiler system in the world. The caretaker or the facilities manager does not know how to use it" or people have the air conditioning on and the windows open, even though the technology is there, because they do not know how to use it. You have to have a parallel process and we are very concerned that the social learning aspects in schemes like the Carbon Trust and WRAP, the Waste Recovery Action Programme, are not there. I am not saying do not do it; you need both. Q188 Mr Ainsworth: Obviously you need to have people who are trained to use the kit but do you not think there is a case for saying that technological development is capable of driving behaviour change, partly because people like new gadgets and if they are cheaper to operate they are going to install them? Mr Restorick: Partly, I agree, but I have also been to too many businesses where they have the latest technology and it is too complicated for them to use in an efficient way. They have not learned how to use it. There is a definite role for it but I do not think it is the only answer. Q189 Mr Ainsworth: What do you think are some of the most interesting examples of informal learning and training in this field? Mr Restorick: You have to look at where the successes have been. Taking it in a very broad way, the successes have been on things like fair trade and the whole organic food market. The growth in those areas has been absolutely significant. Why is that? Because of the very close links back to personal wellbeing and health. There is quite a lot of very well backed celebrity engagement on things like the trade issues, for example. There have been very coordinated, successful campaigns at a variety of levels by partnerships with groups like Oxfam and Christian Aid, backed up by people like Bono and U2, giving a credible edge. There are successes in certain areas. Q190 Mr Ainsworth: Does this suggest that the Third World development NGOs are just better, better organised and more able to capture public opinion than some of the environmental NGOs? Mr Restorick: Personally, I think so. It sounds terrible but I think they are more willing to work constructively together. Q191 Mr Thomas: Turning to the government's own action on this, you are very critical in the evidence you have given to the Committee of the continuing use by Defra in particular of information campaigns. You say that Defra's own review of sustainability and communications demonstrated that those campaigns were not working to a change to more sustainable behaviour. You single out WRAP Recycle Now as an example of this. Do you know what the thinking was behind that? Was it that Defra's own communications review did not happen in time to stop a campaign like the WRAP campaign happening or was it that Defra just carries on with its campaigns regardless of what their internal reviews tell them anyway? Mr Restorick: It has been fascinating. I have met the head of communications at WRAP with whom I had quite an interesting meeting. I also spoke with the sustainable development unit at Defra and I have had meetings with Margaret Beckett's adviser, Stephen, on this very issue. The message coming from Defra centrally is a recognition that these sorts of campaigns do not work. That recognition has now come to the extent that the new sustainable development strategy, when it comes out in March, has an entire chapter about behaviour change and how to facilitate it, which has been done by Surrey University. When I went to see the head of communications at WRAP questioning why this campaign happened, I was not very popular at the meeting and I brought all the evidence from this Committee in the past and the evidence that Defra had through their review of communications for sustainable development. There was a total lack of awareness of that work happening. I think Defra's agencies operate fairly freely in terms of what they try and do. Q192 Mr Thomas: There is a lack of strategy? Mr Restorick: Yes. All the reasoning behind the campaign I had heard four or five times before, the "Are you doing your bit?" climate change campaign, the energy efficiency campaigns. The message is all the same. The question about how they would measure has a fairly poor answer in terms of behaviour change, as far as I can see. There was a total belief that that campaign was going to achieve its objectives. It might well do. Q193 Mr Thomas: We will wait and see but you are sceptical obviously. You mentioned that Defra will be concentrating more thoroughly on behaviour change in their next work. Have you had any liaison with DfES on this as to whether they are being more innovative or will be more innovative now they have environmental education as part of their remit? Mr Restorick: There is a radical difference. We finally persuaded Defra to do our eco team programme with their employees which is a big and very positive step forward because there is an understanding in Defra that you have to a bit cuter about your information in campaigns. The conversations I have had with DfES have been at a much lower level within the civil servants at DfES and they are incredibly defensive on this subject. I would not even get close to having a similar sort of discussion. Q194 Mr Thomas: Is that because the drawbridges are up and you just cannot get to the level where you need to be to have those sort of discussions? Mr Restorick: Yes. Q195 Mr Thomas: What about at the more local or regional level? Again, you refer to a lack of coherence in the government's efforts here at a local and regional level. As we have discussed Wales, let us look at England and the Regional Development Agencies. How are they committed to education for sustainable development? Are there any examples of a Regional Development Agency that has taken this on board thoroughly and integrated it or are they all just as bad as each other? Mr Restorick: I think the north east has done quite a lot practically and the north west has done a lot theoretically. Q196 Chairman: What about the West Midlands? Mr Restorick: We have not had many dealings with the West Midlands so I cannot really comment. We have had more dealings with the south west. It has not been so positive. The overwhelming impression I get from all the RDAs that I speak to, again at not a very senior level, is that financial imperative overwhelms anything else. Q197 Mr Thomas: All the RDAs are working to the same establishment, if you like. They are set up by the government in the same way. The only difference should be geographical, not in terms of what they are trying to achieve. There might be different priorities in a geographical area but in terms of an approach to education for sustainable development it should either be there or not. Does it not go back to the government? Mr Restorick: No. I think it comes back to the problem in terms of sustainable development which has environmental, financial and social. Some of what we would consider to be the more enlightened RDAs see environment as being perhaps not on an equal footing but more important than some of the other RDA work. You can say you will do what you like on those three things but when you get down to decisions it is the financial driver, the economic development of a region, that overpowers in most of the RDAs. Q198 Mr Thomas: What about the funding specifically for advancing the cause of education for sustainable development within the RDAs? Is there any funding scheme available in any of the RDAs at the moment? Mr Restorick: The only direct experience I have had on that is that in the south west we ran a partnership project with the Environment Agency, Groundwork and two other environmental organisations to encourage small and medium sized enterprises to be more competitive through better environmental performance. We get funding from the Objective 2 regional development fund and European fund which we have to match. Previously we matched it with landfill tax funding. We have now lost that and we have been to the RDA to ask them to match it. We have had absolutely no joy at all in getting the match funding. That has jeopardised the entire project. Q199 Chairman: Does that mean you have lost the European funding? Mr Restorick: We have a decision to make in April, because the first three years ended in March, about whether we as an organisation take the risk and say yes, we will take European money, knowing that if we do not get the match for it we will have to return whatever percentage we do not match. We are in a financially precarious position anyway, so it is probably a risk we will not be able to stand. Q200 Mr Thomas: That in itself is an unfortunate example of a lack of commitment, but at least there was the chance of a project getting off the ground in the south west. Are there similar things happening that you are aware of in other RDAs? Mr Restorick: The north west has a very good scheme and Wales has the Green Dragon. Q201 Mr Thomas: Since the funding for the RDAs, we know how the referendum has gone in parts of England so it is a centrally driven thing once again in these Regional Development Agencies. Some of the funding is coming from the centre. Is there no sign of some centrally driven thought process, urgency or priority towards sustainable development which is shaping what the RDAs are doing, or is it really just down to the make up of each RDA? Mr Restorick: I am in danger of sounding like a grumpy old man here but I have not seen that drive personally. Chairman: Thank you very much. You have been very forthright in the evidence you have given to us and we do appreciate you taking the trouble to come here. If there are any further thoughts you have which you think would assist us in looking to see how this is being taken forward by government, we would be very pleased to receive it. Meanwhile, thank you for the work that you are doing on the ground, where it really matters. Thank you very much. |