Education (Environment and Sustainable Citizenship) Bill [HL]

Lord Walney Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 16th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Walney (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I add my congratulations and strong support to the noble Lord, Lord Knight. He was a brilliant Schools Minister, and he nailed the case in the introduction to his Bill. I naturally share the scepticism that he expressed, and on which the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, expanded, about the dangers of loading the curriculum with ever more worthy subjects—each worthy in their own right. However, this is so transcendentally important an issue that we must give it a greater focus within the education system and, frankly, across our public discourse than it has at the moment.

My emphasis might be different from that of the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, on the question of how wide this should be and whether it should encompass wider issues of sustainability. I have had my kids coming home from Scottish schools up in arms about invasive species, wanting to tell the whole world, and the political world, about the danger of particular plants overtaking other plants in the garden, which is worthy. However, even if one takes a minority view, or if there is only an outside chance of catastrophic damage from climate change—the climate chaos and disaster that may come within our lifetimes, potentially within the decade—we have to put greater focus on it than at present.

The level of change needed in this country and across the world is greater than any Government are currently prepared to sign up to. The reason underlying that, in my view, is that the public are not ready to accept that level of change, and they cannot be ready to do so unless they can understand to a greater degree what is at risk. That has to be embedded within the school curriculum. I would suggest going further and making a special case for an outside body of experts—I am not sure exactly what it would be—responsible for setting the guidance for what the curriculum ought to say. I am not sure that this can be left to the Government of the day, who may not be prepared to take as holistic a view of the science as is necessary. This process should start in schools, but we should also use it as a platform for wider debate in society about what we need to know, and what the public need to know, and how we go about addressing it, in this Chamber, the other place and right across society; it is so fundamentally important. I very much welcome this contribution to the debate and will strongly support its process through this House.