UKSCN call to include climate emergency in education
The UK Parliament has accepted that a climate emergency exists. So how should the government respond? Joe Brindle aged 17 from the Schools Team of UK Student Climate Network writes:
On the 20th September we had our largest strike yet. Hundreds of thousands of young people and adults left their schools and workplaces to demand stronger government action on the climate crisis. Since the beginning, education reform has been one of UKSCN’s key four demands, and today we launch #TeachTheFuture – our campaign to reorient the entire English education system around the climate emergency and ecological crisis.
We believe that it is not good enough that climate change is restricted to a few subjects and that many of our teachers and lecturers don’t know enough about it. This must be an educational priority.
Will you join us in calling on government to #TeachTheFuture?
We have six demands:
- A government commissioned review into how the whole of the English education system is preparing students for the climate emergency and ecological crisis.
- Inclusion of the climate emergency and ecological crisis in teaching standards.
- An English Climate Emergency Education Act.
- A national climate emergency youth voice grant fund.
- A Youth Climate Endowment Fund.
- All new state-funded educational buildings should be net-zero by 2020; all existing by 2030.
If young people learn about the climate emergency and ecological crisis, we won’t continue to repeat the mistakes of the past.