Berkshire Warming – Did you go to the Festival of Education back in July? NAEE Trustee, David Dixon, reflects on his experience of the event.
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Nature Park Update – On 12 July staff from the Natural History Museum and the Royal Horticultural Society ran a live online 30-minute broadcast aimed at teachers so they could prepare for how their setting might get involved when the National Education Nature Park and Climate Action Awards programme launches in the autumn. A recording of the webinar is now available on YouTube. For more information about the programme click here.
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Mock COP – SOS UK recently held an online Mock Education Ministers Summit. It was attended by 227 youth delegates from 89 countries, and it culminated in the world’s first youth-led definition of quality climate education. If you missed it you can watch some of the plenary sessions on Mock COP’s Youtube account. SOS UK is now helping the delegates to engage their education ministers in their joint asks. It hopes to bring national and/or devolved administration, climate education commitments to COP28, and is working with the COP Presidency on that. It is also working to ensure that the youth statement shapes what UNESCO is doing on its new commitments.
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Teaching for Sustainable Futures – UCL’s Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Education (CCCSE) has launched their first free online professional development resource for teachers – Teaching for Sustainable Futures – for those teaching history and geography in primary and secondary schools. You can find out more here.
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Getting Out and About – The DfE has made available a £15 million grant to support young people in getting outdoors and learning about the natural world. The funding can be used to buy equipment or teaching tools, such as acoustic listening devices, help with the purchase of outdoor equipment and clothing, create outdoor teaching areas, and provide accessible routes to nature in schools for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities. To see the conditions and other details click here.
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Transforming Education – Continuing the UNESCO-UNFCCC Climate education for social transformation webinar series, the next event on 12th September will discuss How can transformative learning environments shape the learning content? You can find out more here.
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UKFIET – The conference of the Education and Development Forum (UKFIET), is to be held both online (7th Sept) and in Oxford (12th -14th Sept). There will be many sessions that will be of interest to those in Global Edacation & Leanring. The theme is Education for Social & Environmental Justice: Diversity, Sustainability, Responsibility.
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Educational Excellence – Global Action Plan has been awarded the Global Good Award for Educational Excellence together with Unilever for the creation of the Persil Dirt is Good Schools Programme. This “empowers students aged 7-14 to unite in compassion and take action on the social and environmental causes they care about”, whilst also working towards the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. To learn more about the programme click here.
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Cycle Up – The USA-based National Environmental Education Foundation (NEEF) says check out these easy upcycle projects to turn discarded household items into useful products. These projects feature the creation of plastic jump ropes, t-shirt coasters, planters, and more, and are suitable for learners of all ages.
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Sustainability Awards – Congratulations to Dr Nicole Blum and Dr Frances Hunt (from DERC) who received a highly commended Sustainability Education Award at the annual UCL Sustainability Awards Ceremony for their work on the short course: Educating for Sustainable Development (ESD) in Schools and Universities.
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Tree Emergency – Woodlands need our help. As part of supporting its Emergency Tree Fund, the Woodland Trust is gathering views and insights to contribute to the success and creation of woodlands across the UK. So, if you are a teacher or facilitator, and can provide insights into how best to integrate learning about trees into formal education, please fill in the survey here.
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Pro Wolf? – Where do you stand on wolves? More specifically, on their reintroduction to the UK? Is it a recurrent topic in your school eco-group and you’re anxious to explore the issue further? If so, George Monbiot has an article for you in the Guardian about wolves and the problem of too many deer. It begins:
“What’s missing from this picture? I mean the picture of rural Britain many of us hold in our heads, whether it be a thatched and mullioned idyll, or the bare hills fetishised by naive nature writers? Well, quite a lot. Trees in the uplands; soft boundaries between habitats (ecotones) that are crucial for thriving food webs; dead wood, of which there’s a dearth in this country; scrub (a vital but derided habitat); undrained wetlands; and wild, healthy rivers. But there’s something else, something whose absence is less visible but just as important. Wolves.”
Other perspectives are possible, of course.
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Mere Weeds – Francis Ratnieks and Nick Balfour from the University of Sussex argue in an article for The Conversation that native common wildflowers provide large amounts of pollen and nectar for insects – but many are undervalued by the public and dismissed as mere weeds.
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Grid Lines – The Economist has a guide to how the electricity grid will need to be transformed as we evolve to Net-Zero. It’s part of its Technology Quarterly supplement.
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The next edition of the Newsletter will be on Monday September 4th.