Thank you for contacting me about climate change and the curriculum. Education is an area I feel so passionately about, and I am regularly working with schools in my constituency to improve educational facilities and provide the very best outcomes for our young people.
The Department for Education’s Sustainability and Climate Change Strategy sets out initiatives which include support for teaching about nature and climate change, the introduction of a Natural History GCSE, a National Education Nature Park, and the Climate Leaders Award. These programs will not only engage pupils with the natural world, but will directly involve them in measuring and improving biodiversity in their school, college, or university.
Teachers are supported to deliver world-leading climate change education through a model science curriculum. The programme encourages students to get involved in the natural world, by increasing biodiversity in the grounds of their educational setting, including small steps like setting up bird feeders. It involves the launch of the virtual National Education Nature Park, which will enable children and young people to track their progress against other schools across the country, as well as increase their knowledge of different species. It provides free access to high quality curriculum resources, so teachers in all schools and subjects can choose those that will support teaching sustainability and climate change.
More broadly, the science GCSE gives pupils the opportunity to consider the evidence for additional anthropogenic causes of climate change. Furthermore, a new environmental science A Level was introduced in 2017 which enables young people to study topics that will enhance their understanding of climate change and how it can be addressed.
The geography curriculum at Key Stages 3 and 4 includes content designed to enable pupils to understand ways in which human and physical processes interact to influence and change the climate, as well as environments and landscapes. It also includes content on the change in climate from the Ice Age to the present day. GCSE Geography gives pupils an opportunity to consider the causes, consequences of and responses to extreme weather conditions and natural weather hazards.
I believe that these measures will help us to deliver a better, safer and greener world for future generations by enabling young people to get hands-on experience of understanding and nurturing the biodiversity around them.
Thank you again for taking time to contact me.