Education (Environment and Sustainable Citizenship) Bill [HL]

Lord Browne of Ladyton Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 16th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate and pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Knight of Weymouth.

I welcome this Bill. Noble Lords have made a convincing case for it. I do not intend to go over that ground again, except to repeat the point made by my noble friend Lord Blunkett that substantial research shows that environment and sustainable citizenship education has many diverse benefits for students, and that they perform better all round with it.

I expect that the Minister will agree but will, graciously and on behalf of the Government, decline to take advantage of this Bill as all is fine. I also expect that her response will echo the Lords’ Library briefing, which reports that, in 2019, when Labour argued that climate change should be a core element of the school curriculum, the Government countered that climate change is already included in several places. That may be true, but is it sufficient? I can think of no better way to test that than, once again—I make no apology for this—to draw your Lordships’ attention to Gavin Williamson’s own words in the form of his written evidence to the Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee, of which I am a member.

The evidence was published on Wednesday and was given in response to a short questionnaire deigned to elicit information about what the department is doing in preparation for COP 26. When asked how the department sees its role in the preparations for COP 26, the answer revealed this:

“The COP26 President Designate, Alok Sharma has written to the Education Secretary setting out DfE’s role”,


including

“profiling England as a trail blazer on climate education”.

In response, apparently the department is

“currently exploring what a climate policy and programme package could look like.”

That is it.

In the answer to question 3, we are told that the department

“is currently preparing a Sustainability and Climate Change Strategy. We aim to launch the strategy for public consultation to coincide with COP26. The DfE sustainability strategy is likely”—

“likely” is underlined—

to centre on four strategic aims”,

one of which is “Citizens connected to nature”.

When asked what the department considers

“to be the biggest challenges related to climate change mitigation and adaptation that fall within its remit”,

the answer covered 60% of the whole submission in 15 paragraphs under three headings. Fourteen of them are about the education estate, the department’s capital and school rebuilding programme, carbon reduction and how the department will deliver net zero, as well as the Green Jobs Taskforce and the skills challenge. One paragraph, of one sentence, refers to the department’s core function and is headed “Preparing a generation that will have to live and work in a world affected by climate change”. It reads:

“Through the development of our Sustainability and Climate Change Strategy we will explore how we can best prepare this generation for the world in which they will live.”


The curriculum gets no mention. There is nothing about what is currently being taught to our children.

I regret that it appears that we do not have a strategy for this and that the best we can hope for is that the department may develop a broader strategy that may be ready for consultation coinciding with COP 26. If ever there was evidence that this Bill is necessary, it is the Secretary of State’s own evidence to our Select Committee.