The Queen’s Speech – Last week’s announcement of the government’s proposed legislative programme said this: “Reforms to education will help every child fulfil their potential wherever they live, raising standards and improving the quality of schools and higher education [Schools Bill, Higher Education Bill].” . The HE Bill has a focus on skills. Details are available in the background notes.

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Manifesto Reviewed – So far there have been two comments on the NAEE Manifesto, and you can find these on naee.org.uk here (Ben Ballin), and here (John Foster).  There will be more.  If you’d like to comment please just let us know.

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Promote and Embed – The Education and Training Foundation – has issued Professional Standards for Teachers and Trainers in the Further Education and Training Sector.  Under the heading of Professional Values and Attributes, teachers and trainers are expected to “Develop their own judgment of what works and does not work in their teaching and training”.  Number 2 on the list of things to do is: “Promote and embed education for sustainable development (ESD) across learning and working practices.”  The definition of ESD is taken from UNESCO: “[empowering] learners to take informed decisions and responsible actions for environmental integrity, economic viability and a just society, for present and future generations, while respecting cultural diversity. It is about lifelong learning, and is an integral part of quality education.”

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Snapshot – The first issue of DfE’s Climate in Education Snapshot is now available.  DfE will send these updates to provide information on [i] what it is currently working on to make its strategy a reality; [ii] what is coming up soon; and [iii] how we can get involved with DfE. The first includes a welcome from the Secretary of State for Education, and information on the newly published Sustainability and Climate Change Strategy for the Education and Children’s Services Systems.  If you would like to receive further updates about the development and delivery of DfE’s Sustainability and Climate Change Strategy, you can sign up to the mailing list by completing this form.

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Climate for All – Climate Ambassadors is an initiative led by the University of Reading and STEM Learning to mobilise experts within the climate sector and support them to work with young people and educators.  By supporting Climate Ambassadors to deliver successful interactions with young people the initiative aims to ensure that young people of today are equipped to tackle the climate issues of tomorrow.  Reading climate scientist ,Andrew Charlton-Perez, said: “The Climate Ambassador Scheme goes beyond the occasional class talk or school assembly and, importantly, is about more than just science.  We believe that climate change is relevant in every classroom, across all subjects.”

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Green Stories –  A new project where the Green Stories project is teaming with Herculean Climate Solutions and the Climate Fiction Writer’s League to compile an anthology of short stories that showcase real and potential solutions to the climate crisis to hand out to delegates attending COP27 in November 2022.  The plan is to create a free anthology of short stories that are fictional, but showcase real/potential green solutions, so delegates and attendees can read the story & think, ‘yes, I can help make something like that happen in my country’.  The organisers are keen to get expert opinions on the ideas, so if you can help, please complete this short survey.

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Fashion Solutions – The inaugural issue of the International Journal of Sustainable Fashion & Textiles is free to read.  This is a peer-reviewed academic publication and the world’s first ongoing subscription journal dedicated to the area of sustainability and ethics in the fashion and textiles industry. Its principal aim is to provide a platform for the advancement of sustainable fashion and textiles innovation, raise awareness of the environmental and social issues, and disseminate how sustainable solutions can be implemented.

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Nature in Cincinnati – Registration is open for the largest national gathering of nature-based early education professionals.  This year’s Nature-Based Early Learning Conference is hybrid, so you can join the event in-person in Cincinnati or online.  Live and in-person events take place July 27–30.  You can learn more here and register.

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Future Proof? – The Association for Citizenship Teaching is hosting its annual national conference on the 5th of July. The theme is ‘Future-proofing your Citizenship curriculum to achieve transformative outcomes’.  There will be workshops facilitated aiming to give teachers new teaching ideas, support with curriculum planning, and developing strategies to lead Citizenship and associated activities across schools.  For more information see: ACT Teaching Citizenship Conference 2022

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Oceans 1  – The NOAA Ocean Service Education site includes ocean and coastal curricula for educators; thematic modules about corals, ocean currents and tides, estuaries, global positioning, pollution, nautical charts, and seafloor mapping for students; and hands-on activities and materials for explorers of all ages.  The NOAA Education resource collections are organized by themes aligned with common teaching topics including ocean and coasts, weather and atmosphere, climate, marine life, freshwater, data resources, and more.

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Oceans 2 – It’s World Ocean Day on June 8th. You can find tools and resources to help you plan conservation-related educational activities to protect our oceans at WorldOceanDay.org

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Nature Atlas – The National Biodiversity Network Trust has a new five-year strategy: Making Data work for Nature.  The trust is a UK partnership for nature.  The NBN Atlas – one of the world’s largest repositories of publicly available biodiversity data with more than 200 million records of over 46,000 UK species is at the heart of the data flow for nature’s recovery.

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Reptiles at Risk – A paper in Nature argues that, although comprehensive extinction-risk assessments have been available for birds, mammals and amphibians for well over a decadereptiles have, until now, not been comprehensively assessed.  Global assessments reveal that, among tetrapods, 40.7% of amphibians, 25.4% of mammals and 13.6% of birds are threatened with extinction The authors argue that their comprehensive extinction-risk assessment of reptiles show that at least 1,829 out of 10,196 species (21.1%) are threatened – confirming a previous extrapolation and representing 15.6 billion years of phylogenetic diversity.

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A Road for Bees – An article in The Conversation by Morgan Morrison and Hannah Wolmuth-Gordon, Royal Holloway University of London, explores the theory and practice of the bee highway.  The idea is to facilitate bees and other pollinators to travel through our cities, towns and countryside, as bees can become being isolated and unable to fly if there are no plants they can get food from.

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