SOS UK – Here’s an update about what Students Organising for Sustainability is planning in its lineup of sustainability and wellbeing programmes for the 2024-25 academic year. . O4YC Curriculum – There are two free online sessions to explore what the OY4C Curriculum looks like.  They are for anyone including students, teachers, climate scientists/experts, NGOs, parents, Heads of schools, governmental officials…etc.  Details: – Saturday, April 20th at 1100 – 1140 BST  and  – Saturday, April 20th at 1800 – 1840 BST.  Furt ..read more

Today’s post is by Ben Ballin, who’s a member of the West Midlands Sustainable Schools Network [@wmsussch], and an Educationalist at Big Brum. He reports on the work of the Standing Conference on the Arts, Education and the Environment. “We are literally in the mouth of the Giant” – conference participant “Children are too often sold a false promise that small things (walking to school, switching lights off) will have a bigger impact than they do. We need a wider conversation …” – Solihull teacher  In July 2023, with NAEE support, Big Brum TIE hosted an event in Birmingham to initiate a ..read more

Today’s post is by David Dixon, NAEE Trustee and author of Leadership for Sustainability: saving the planet one school at a time (Crown House Publishing, 2022). David is Tynedale’s Bicycle Mayor. As usual with our blogs, the views expressed are not necessarily shared by the Association. Recently school meals hit the headlines when a headteacher in a letter to parents complained about the poor standard of food being served up in his school by an outside catering company. This went viral and the whole issue of dubious quality meals in schools became a national talking point. This has happened ev ..read more

The most recent Spectator Schools magazine had an article, Better Nature, which focused on “how to make the new natural history GCSE more worthwhile”. This is a plea for natural history to be focused on plants and animals rather than on fashionable causes such as the need to ‘save the world from catastrophe’ as suggested by Baroness Flotilla Benjamin and others. Those who sit on OCR’s advisory group for the GCSE are familiar with these tensions. The author, Jim Lawley, writes: However well-meant such declarations may be, natural history is in fact about identifying and studying plants and ani ..read more

Secrets of the Saltmarsh  By Claire Saxby; illustrated by Alicia Rogerson  CSIRO Publishing, 2023  isbn 9781486317141 (hbk)   It’s not every day that you think of, or use the words ‘salt marsh’. Wetlands, yes, vaulable and quickly disappearing habitats,  a habitat type that we are losing each year to drainage to make way for farmland. However the specific label of ‘saltmarsh’ is not in your roadside cafe.   To clarify, Salt marshes are coastal wetlands that are flooded and drained by salt water brought in by the tides.  Salt marshes provide many ver ..read more

Anna Ridgewell, from the University of Sussex, won the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference 2023 Best ePoster Prize and has now contributed a post to its Blog: Growing up green: What value is placed on accessing outdoor environments across different childcare and educational settings? This is how it begins: “It is well known that spending time in nature is beneficial for children (Chawla, 2015). However, in Britain, children now spend less time outside than previous generations (Moss, 2012), which has been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic (Natural England, 2021). Fur ..read more

Today’s post is by David Dixon, NAEE Trustee and author of Leadership for Sustainability: saving the planet one school at a time (Crown House Publishing, 2022). David is Tynedale’s Bicycle Mayor. As usual with our blogs, the views expressed are not necessarily shared by the Association. If time travellers from the 19th Century were to arrive in 2024, they would marvel at the technological revolutions of our age. These would include our extensive motorways, slick electric cars, railways without steam power, huge container ships, renewable energy production, labour saving household applianc ..read more

Friday was International Poetry Day. To celebrate it here’s John Clare’s On a Lane in Spring. As usual with Clare, the punctuation is minimalist. A Little Lane, the brook runs close beside And spangles in the sunshine while the fish glide swiftly by And hedges leafing with the green spring tide From out their greenery the old birds fly And chirp and whistle in the morning sun The pilewort glitters ‘neath the pale blue sky The little robin has its nest begun And grass green linnets round the bushes fly How Mild the Spring Comes in; the daisy buds Lift up their golden blossoms to the sky How lov ..read more

Snap – The latest DfE climate education snapshot is here.  There’s information on [i] a Sustainability In Education Conference, [ii] the Sustainability at Middlesex Learning Trust, [iii] a month of climate actions, [iv] Education for Sustainability 101, [v] Wilding schools, and more. . Country Profiles – The UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report and its Monitoring and Evaluating Climate Communication and Education project has produced 80 country profiles on strengthening climate change communication and education policies and practices.  Details here. . T ..read more

Youth Pressure – With the general election fast approaching, SOS UK is ramping up its activities in order to create a wave of youth pressure that it hopes can’t be ignored.  Its purpose is to ensure the next government delivers on mandatory, integrated, solutions-centred climate education.  There will be youth political workshops, in-person regional events, and a grading of political candidates on climate education report cards. . Reducing Big Plastic – Nationwide, 100,000 participants, including nearly 13,000 school classes, are participating in th ..read more