The Woodland Trust says nominate your tree of the year. Nominations are open to any living tree in the UK with a story to tell and any individual, group or organisation can nominate a tree until 9 am on 6 August. Winning trees from previous years are excluded.
The UN has published Ocean Literacy for all. This is a toolkit which sets out to provide:
“educators and learners worldwide the innovative tools, methods, and resources to understand the complex ocean processes and functions and, as well, to alert them on the most urgent ocean issues. It also presents the essential scientific principles and information needed to understand the cause – effect relationship between individual and collective behaviuor and the impacts that threaten the ocean health
CLOtC says nominate your LOtC Hero for the 11th annual Awards for Outstanding Contribution to Learning Outside the Classroom. Nominations close on Friday 27th July . There will be heroes in the following categories:
- Inspiring Educator
- Innovator
- Advocate
- Lifetime Achievement
TEESNet will welcome UNESCO’s lead on Education for Sustainable Development to speak at its conference on 11th September 2018 at Liverpool Hope University. UNESCO’s Alexander Leicht will be joined by educator, teacher and NGO delegates as well as fellow speakers Duncan Green, Senior Strategic Adviser for Oxfam and Manju Patel- Nair, Associate at HEC Global Learning Centre, to explore the conference theme: Getting to the Heart of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. The conference will focus on the SDG’s and the role of teacher education in prompting critical engagement and action. See this for full information.
The DfE has published guidance that aims to help schools write policies on charging for school activities and visits. The main points are …
- School governing bodies and local authorities, subject to the limited exceptions referred to in this advice, cannot charge for education provided during school hours (including the supply of any materials, books, instruments or other equipment.
- Schools must ensure that they inform parents on low incomes and in receipt of the benefits listed on page 9 of this document of the support available to them when being asked for contributions towards the cost of school visits.
Last week’s TES had a critical article on the often less than positive effects of the PISA tests. This is how it begins:
“Pisa does not presume to tell countries what they should do. Pisa’s strength lies in telling countries what everybody else is doing.” This statement in Andreas Schleicher’s latest book, World Class: how to build a 21st-century school system, exemplifies the self-contradicting nature of the Pisa enterprise. For nearly two decades, this triennial assessment program has been telling education systems what they should do, despite its claim of the opposite. In this book, Schleicher, the chief orchestrator of Pisa, brings together what Pisa has been telling, without telling, what education systems should do in order to become successful and secure better Pisa outcomes. Many of the recommendations, however, are confusing and meaningless at best and destructive at worst because they are drawn from self-contradicting evidence. …
The most recent BBC Gardener’s World featured Martineau Gardens in Birmingham, one of NAEE’s favourite places. The show is available for a month on i-Player and there’s much in it about moths and butterflies at Martineau.
Earth Overshoot Day marks the date when humanity’s demand for ecological resources and services in a given year exceeds what Earth can regenerate in that year. It is organised by the Global Footprint Network – an international think tank that coordinates research, develops standards and provides a range of tools to help the human economy operate within Earth’s ecological limits. Ideally, there’s wouldn’t be one, but getting it a bit closer to January 1st is an important goal. This year GFN says the date is August 1st. More details here.