ARTICLE: Decisions on ‘most important knowledge’ at the UPPER MACRO site of curriculum making activity. (2/5)
This is the second in a series of articles in response to the recently published final report of the DfE Curriculum and Assessment Review (CAR). Article 1 provides context, including a key explainer of ‘the sites of curriculum making activity’ . This article looks at how climate change and sustainability was addressed by the CAR at the upper macro site, and what campaigners for climate change and sustainability education have achieved so far.*
Article 2: Decisions on ‘most important knowledge’ at the upper macro site of curriculum making activity
The Curriculum and Assessment Review (CAR) was consultative, there was a 9-stop roadshow (Global Action Plan attended four), there was a call for evidence (we helped mobilise 200+ submissions giving evidence of the need for climate change and sustainability education), there were meetings with Professor Becky Francis, her panel, and the civil servants at DfE who they were being supported by (if you could secure them, we managed two or three).
What Francis et. al. heard from teachers, parents, young people, academics, campaigners**, will all have shaped what has been put forward as ‘the most important knowledge that we expect children and young people to learn’ (p. 5) in the final report of the CAR. Thankfully, the importance of the climate and nature crisis appears to have been elevated. Has it been elevated enough? Perhaps not, but there has been progress.
The final report acknowledges that ‘the climate crisis is already impacting our physical landscape and many connected aspects of our lives’ (p. 40), concedes that ‘there is currently minimal explicit inclusion of climate education in the national curriculum’ (p. 40) and states that:
it is crucial that young people benefit from an understanding of the climate crisis’s causes, consequences and possible solutions and that they are empowered with the necessary knowledge and skills to thrive in tomorrow’s industries and tackle the serious challenges facing our planet. (p. 40)
Building on this recognition of the importance of climate change and sustainability education (CCSE), the report recommends steps the Government should take to increase climate change and sustainability’s presence in the national curriculum. Francis et. al., have developed their recommendations from a key assumption about the best way to address environmental change through education:
In a world of rapid technological, environmental and social change, subject-specific knowledge remains the best investment. (p. 10)
They do not provide any evidence to back this statement up; this seemingly ignores the seminal research and evidence on the knowledge-action gap. Helpfully though, they do build on the above to acknowledge that skill development is important too:
However, additional knowledge and skills will be needed if we are to maximise young people’s opportunities and equip them to meet challenges presented by our fast-changing world. The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and trends in digital information demand heightened media literacy and critical thinking, as well as digital skills. Likewise, global challenges, both social and environmental, require attention to scientific and cultural knowledge and skills. (p. 10)***
Francis et. al. have thus taken the decision, at the upper macro site of curriculum making activity, that climate change and sustainability meet the criteria of ‘most important’. Exactly how important they are perceived to be begins to be revealed as the report sets out how, where, and when the national curriculum should explicitly reference climate change and sustainability. They do this by citing climate change and sustainability at various points throughout the report and by making numerous high-level statements as part of their recommendations to Government.
Under Geography, for example, the report recommends to the Government that it:
Embeds climate change and sustainability more explicitly across different key stages, including across the physical geography, geographical applications and human geography sections of the curriculum, ensuring early, coherent, and more detailed engagement with climate education. This should be done without risking curriculum overload. (p. 84)
Similar recommendations on climate change and sustainability can be found under Citizenship, RHE/RSHE and PSHE (p. 62), D&T (p. 70) and Science (p. 117); but nowhere elsewhere.
What are we to make of this as campaigners for CCSE? How well have we done as influencers of what has gone on over the last 18 months in the upper macro site of curriculum making activity?
We have done relatively well. The new national curriculum will be better than the current national curriculum vis-à-vis climate change and sustainability, and better than it would have been without the determined efforts of campaigners.
It won’t, however, be anything close to what we want it to ultimately be (if indeed we want there to be a national curriculum of such prominence at all - I explored this in this 2024 essay). As Matt Carmichael pointed out, the review’s recommendations are what we expected them to be, and that’s OK - there are no overly exciting nor terribly ugly surprises. We can therefore see it as a reasonably solid ‘stepping stone’, one that might help us get from where we were in June 2024 to where we eventually need to be.
The campaign and advocacy work, however, is not yet done. Far from it. Focus now needs to turn to what we might term the lower macro site of curriculum making activity, and then to the more complex meso site.
Footnotes
*A version of this article appeared first on the Global Action Plan website.
**Be in no doubt that the Secretary of State’s views, the views of her Ministers, and most likely the Prime Minister and his advisor’s views, all had an influence too.
**Note here that specific skills (critical thinking, digital) are named in relation to AI, but not in relation to social and environmental challenges. There is nothing whatsoever in the report about the need to develop ‘ecological thinking’ and the case for supporting young people to become ‘conscious agents of cultural evolution’.