Waitrose supports Countryside Classroom

Waitrose has made a donation to Countryside Classroom, allowing the site to “grow more quickly, reach more teachers sooner and expand the scope of resources available on the site.” Tina Varns, Manager, Sustainability and Responsible Sourcing at Waitrose, said: “We think it’s really important to encourage children to learn about where their food comes from, how…

New from Outdoor Families

The latest feature from Outdoor Families is here. Pacific Coast Highway: OFM’s Guide to an Epic Family Road Trip by Jennifer Fontaine is the story of an epic summer family road trip and “is as American as warm apple pie ala mode”, but the intricacies of planning one can prove a bit more challenging than simply…

A crisis in US environmental policy?

The problems that our sister organisation in North America [NAAEE] is having over its funding have now become clearer.  You can see the detail of the difficulties here, and this quote from NAAEE’s recent message to its members illustrates the significance of the problem the USA as a whole now faces: “The Administration’s budget, as many of…

Bayer Crop Science working with FACE

Bayer Crop Science has started a £10,000 fund with Farming and Countryside Education (FACE) to help increase training opportunities for teachers wanting to work with farmers within the education system.  FACE says that this could lead to over 12,000 more children having some food or farming content within their lesson plans, and an extra 1750 children taking…

What UNESCO is up to

Do you get the ESD ZOOM newsletters from UNESCO?  These are essential reading if you want to keep up with ESD, the GAP, etc round the world.  Here is a link to the most recent one in January. In this, the highlight was UNESCO seeking nominations for the third edition of the UNESCO-Japan Prize on Education for Sustainable Development…

UKFIET Conference

The UKFIET conference takes place sometime soon in Oxford.  Its theme for 2017 is Learning and Teaching for Sustainable Development: curriculum, cognition and context The conference blurb begins: What is taught and learned form the backbone of education’s contribution to sustainable development.  It is through the construction of curricula that knowledge, skills, attitudes and values are…

Freshwater Habitats Trust

Click here for an update from the Freshwater Habitats Trust. There’s a feature on the Trust’s collaboration with Thames Water.  The aims of the project are to: discover fantastic freshwater habitats, that are free from pollution and great for wildlife uncover for the first time the extent of nutrient pollution facing freshwater life today Schools can…

Teaching young people about energy

Yorkshire-based Warm.co.uk says that in an age of rising energy prices and diminishing energy security, it’s time that young people are taught that gas and electricity are not finite resources and that heating has become a hot topic. “We’ve become used to warm comfortable homes, and young people need to be taught that heating is one of…