Support for FE & HE – Teach the Future’s 2023-24 sustainability support package for universities and colleges is now live. You can find out more here.

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DfE News – The latest issue of the DfE’s Climate in Education Snapshot is now available. It includes:

  • A reminder about Outdoor Classroom Day on 18th May
  • Details on the upcoming launch of its Sustainability Leadership and Climate Action Plans GOV.UK Page and Procurement
  • Free Sustainability Resources for Primary Schools from The Angling Trust
  • Case studies and good practice from Our Shared World, Chester Zoo and the Annual South Yorkshire Schools Climate Conference

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We are Carbon – In her podcast Helen Fisher talks with people from science, agriculture, business, culture and education about climate change.  You can read and subscribe here.  A recent edition was an interview with Richard Dunne on Natural Curriculum! Equipping Children to Live Regeneratively. 

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What Matters in Wales? – In the new Curriculum for Wales, sustainability and climate change are only referenced in the Humanities and in Science & Technology, and also in What Matters statements.  They are not yet fully integrated across the curriculum.  

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SOS UK – In February Students Organising for Sustainability held its 9th Student Sustainability Summit, bringing students from across the UK together for a day of learning, networking, and knowledge sharing. You can find out more about the day here.

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The Road to COP28 – The first UNESCO-UNFCCC webinar series on climate change education for social transformation on the road to COP27, had 15,000 participants from 184 countries to discuss how to green education policy and curriculum. UNESCO and UNFCCC are launching a second series on the road to COP28 in Dubai, focused on the topic of greening school.  The 6 sessions are:

  • Session 1 (May): What is a green school? 
  • Session 2 (June): What does a climate-proof and climate-ready school look like? 
  • Session 3 (July): How can schools collaborate with communities? 
  • Session 4 (September): How can transformative learning environments shape content? 
  • Session 5 (November): Getting ready to promote greening schools at COP28 
  • Session 6 (December): Post-COP28 greening schools: Where do we go from here?

Details here.

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£840,000 – The DfE intends to set up a support hub for Sustainability Leadership and Climate Action Plans (from July 2023 to 2025).  The hub is to offer schools guidance, information and “capability” to embed climate change and sustainability.  This will include an online self-assessment tool to enable sustainability leads to assess their setting’s capacity to “deliver a wholistic approach to sustainability”.  Once completed, the support hub then can point out resources that would enable schools to develop climate action plans.  Details here.

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Another Cap – The Department for Education’s Climate and Sustainability Strategy has an expectation that all 40,000 schools in England will have a Climate Action Plan (CAP) by 2025, and encourages them to restore nature in their grounds through their national Nature Park scheme. This is, however, not mandatory.  Further, it seems will there will not be a standard CAP template, nor a fund to help schools with their rewilding efforts.

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Track Changing the Curriculum – Teach the Future says please join its webinar about Curriculum for a Changing Climate on 11th May as it launches its new set of track changed subjects.  You will hear from students, academics and teachers on the importance of the project and how the new curriculum is being used.  You can sign up here.

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Eco Ed – The Ministry of Eco Education has launched a new website where schools can access resources to embed sustainability across the curriculum, bringing together outputs from other organisations, including seven sustainability themes and their big questions – and a personalised 5 step journey: surveys, curriculum mapping tools, school site mapping tools, and Staff training, awards and funding.

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Bannau Brycheiniog National Park – Wales has a new national park; well, it’s an old park with a new name which is really an old name.  If you’re confused, here’s an explanation here from Michael Sheen.  The new name, “Ban-eye Bruck-ein-iog“, will be included on signage and promotional material. We’ll all be perfectly free to choose whichever name we prefer, said the CEO: “Many people who we love to welcome to the park will continue to call it the Brecon Beacons. That’s absolutely fine.”  The URL remains the same.  For our Welsh-speaking readers, here’s Rebecca Thomas’ The Conversation article on the change.

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Circular Podcasts – The Ellen MacArthur Foundation will be launching a new podcast series looking at our food system. Before then, they say why not catch up on its recent outputs:

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Far too Dry – The latest data on butterflies in the UK has shown that in 2022 butterfly numbers were good or average in spring and early summer, but greatly reduced later in the year following the widespread lack of rain which caused the plants that caterpillars feed on to wither and die. The knock-on effect from this is that there are fewer butterflies in the following generation. For some species we have already seen the effect of this, but we can expect to see a decline in the numbers of other species in 2023 too.  More details c/o Butterfly Conservation.

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Pollination Revelation – Moths are more efficient pollinators at night than day-flying pollinators such as bees, new research from the University of Sussex has found.  Amid widespread concern about the decline of wild pollinating insects like bees and butterflies, researchers, including Dr Max Anderson, Butterfly Conservation’s South West Landscape Officer, have discovered that moths are particularly vital pollinators.  Details here.

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