Hackney teachers want the environment to stay on curriculum

Urswick School students win gold awards in the London's Children's Flower Society spring bulbs competition

Schools in Hackney have joined a call to keep the environment in the National Curriculum in an open letter to the education secretary Michael Gove.

According to a recent survey by anti-litter charity Keep Britain Tidy, 92 per cent of teachers want sustainability and the environment at the forefront of the National Curriculum.

The Department for Education (DfE) is currently consulting on its proposed new curriculum for England. Responding to the Draft National Curriculum, Keep Britain Tidy, who are leading the campaign, said they are “deeply shocked” that draft guidelines for children in key stages 1 to 3  “remove all mention of climate change and sustainable development from geography teaching and have little mention of sustainable development, climate change or the interrelation between society and the environment.”

Forty schools in Hackney take part in Keep Britain Tidy’s Eco-Schools programme, which promotes sustainability and environmental education.

The letter, signed by Oxfam, the Women’s Institute, Friends of the Earth, the Food Ethics Council and the New Economics Foundation, emphasises that “schools which have embedded sustainability in their learning have been shown by Ofsted in many research reports to be ‘Good’ or ‘Excellent’ and have good links to improved achievement.”

Hackney’s Urswick School, which has gone from ‘Satisfactory’ in 2009 to ‘Good with Outstanding Features’ in its Ofsted inspection last month, holds a Green Flag Award for its commitment to environmental issues.

“Young people are often the group most interested and concerned about environmental issues – it is their future that is at stake” said Urswick’s headteacher Richard Brown.

In Keep Britain Tidy’s survey, 86 per cent of teachers also agreed there is a danger that interest in implementing environmental programmes will wane if the government does not emphasise the importance of the subject.

Keep Britain Tidy feel that Michael Gove is flying in the face of the very advice he commissioned when he asked an independent panel of experts for advice on the new curriculum. They advised Mr Gove that sustainability should be an overarching aim of the curriculum.

The charity, collaborating with SEEd (Sustainability and Environmental Education) on the campaign, believes Downing Street are failing to live up to their promise to be the ‘greenest ever’ government and are giving up on the next generation by not keeping the environment at the centre of their new curriculum.

“Our students need the skills, innovation and creativity required for an environmentally, economically and socially better future,” a spokesperson added.

The government’s consultation on the new curriculum ended on 16 April.

Read the letter here (opens as PDF).