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11.15 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment (Mr. Charles Clarke): I congratulate the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Luff) on securing the debate. He laid down quite a
challenge in his final remarks. When he was talking about our muddled thinking, I found it entertaining that he described his interests as being a member of the Country Landowners Association and the wildlife trust in his constituency. Some might say that there was an element of muddle in some of those issues, too, when they came around the corner.
I strongly believe, as do the Government, in educating children about sustainable development. It needs to be at the core of the education system. That is why we established the sustainable development education panel, which has worked very hard and produced a stimulating, wide-ranging first annual report, covering all phases of education and training and all types of informal learning.
I take the opportunity to pay tribute to the work of the panel, which was chaired by Sir Geoffrey Holland, the former permanent secretary at the Department for Education and Employment, who knows these issues fully and with whom I and my colleagues have discussed the recommendations in very great detail. We are working with the panel and consulting on the recommendations for education and training. I am placing copies of the report in the Library for the reference of all Members.
The panel defined sustainable development in the following way:
As the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire said, the national curriculum is under review at present. The aims of the review are clear. They are: increased flexibility and reduced prescription in the curriculum, giving teachers more scope to use their professional discretion; a full and rounded entitlement to learning for all pupils; continued emphasis on literacy and numeracy; further opportunities for work-related learning in schools; and helping young people to develop a fuller understanding of their role and responsibilities as citizens in a modern democracy.
In accordance with those aims, we have listened to the representations by the sustainable development education panel to raise the profile of sustainable development in the school curriculum, and that has informed our proposals for the national curriculum. Only today, I read the response to that consultation from the Council for Environmental Education. I shall take the opportunity to place on record what the council said about that approach. It said:
I shall provide a number of examples, some of which the hon. Gentleman mentioned, of specific proposals in the national curriculum through which we have sought to take into account the issues of sustainability.
First and foremost, the science curriculum teaches children that actions have consequences, and that some of those consequences are irreversible. That is one of the keys to understanding sustainable development. It is at the core of the science curriculum and runs through all the key stages. From five to 16, pupils must study a theme on living things in their environment which draws out those points.
At key stage 3, for ages 11 to 14, the curriculum requires pupils to learn how living things and the environment can be protected in a way that is consistent with the demands of society, and to learn about the distinction between renewable and non-renewable resources--a key concept in the idea of sustainability. At key stage 4, for ages 14 to 16, pupils must be taught about the impact of human activity on the environment and its relation to social and economic factors, and about energy efficiency and the environmental implications of generating energy.
Those are all important aspects of the science curriculum in the consultation in which we are currently engaged, and put sustainable development at the core of the education system.
Mr. Luff:
The Minister has rightly quoted from the response of the Council for Environmental Education. He has just dealt with science. It is worth putting on record that the CEE also states in its response:
Mr. Clarke:
That does not contradict my comments at all. The consultation on the national curriculum in which we are engaged is a genuine consultation. We welcome not only the contribution of the hon. Gentleman this evening but the comments of a wide range of organisations, which will help to improve particular aspects of the national curriculum. I know that the hon. Gentleman would not want those remarks, valid as they are, to detract from the thrust of the CEE's view that, for the first time in history, the Government have taken seriously the challenge of putting sustainable development at the core of the national curriculum.
That is true of the geography curriculum too, where environmental change and sustainable development are introduced at all key stages, including key stage 1 for ages five to seven. In geography, we highlight the importance of sustainable development through additional references to the use of resources and the effect on the environment. We make it an explicit requirement to explore the idea of sustainable development and how it relates to changes in places and environments, and to consider the implications of sustainable living.
Similarly in design and technology, to which the hon. Gentleman referred, pupils must reflect on and evaluate ideas from a variety of perspectives, including use, production and marketing, and environmental, cultural and aesthetic considerations. Those ideas are at the core of a sustainable approach to design and technology. In planning, children are encouraged to consider moral, economic, social, cultural and environmental issues.
I maintain that, for the first time in these subjects, we have a concept of sustainable development which is at the core of the curriculum that our children in every school in Britain will learn. That raises to a different plane from what has gone before the extent to which we are addressing and considering such issues.
The major change is the introduction of a framework for personal, social and health education and citizenship. I should put it on record that unlike the rest of the curriculum, which is to be implemented from September 2000, these changes will come into effect from September 2002, should Parliament agree to the orders later this year.
The two key frameworks for PSHE and citizenship provide ample and profound opportunities to consider sustainability issues through learning about the world as a global community, the rights and responsibilities of consumers, employers and employees, and the challenges of global interdependence and responsibility. Pupils will learn about what improves and what harms their local environment, different ways to look after it and the impact of economic choices on the environment.
We are acknowledging in a way that has never been done before that our children are growing up in a world that is so interdependent and changing so rapidly in so many profound and different ways that they will be seriously disadvantaged if they cannot grasp, control and direct the future of the world. That means understanding it from the perspective of sustainability, as the hon. Gentleman highlighted in his speech.
Those ideas--the relationship between the individual, the environment and society--are at the core of our ideas for PSHE and citizenship. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will support the statutory instruments when they are laid before the House later this year. There has been some dissent among Conservative Members. However, the far-seeing Conservative Members who served on the panel dealing with the statutory instruments are strongly in favour of the development. I am confident that the Opposition will support them when they come before the House. Having heard the hon. Gentleman's speech, I know that we shall be able to rely on his support.
We can genuinely say that our proposal places sustainable development at the core of the national curriculum and the education of our children for our future. The consultation is genuine and, when it closes, we shall consider the precise considerations that are put forward, including those made by the hon. Gentleman this evening. In the light of those, we may make various small modifications to aspects of the curriculum. What will not change is our determination that sustainable development shall be at the heart of our national curriculum, because that is at the heart of the future of the whole of our population and that of the world.
Other programmes complement the national curriculum and affect the way in which people operate in schools. For example, we seek to focus on travel to school--safe routes to school and all the issues around that, which ensure that children, from an early age, think how their own conduct in travelling to school can have an impact on the environment.
We have signed up to the international global learning and observations to benefit the environment programme and implemented it in England. The programme links sustainable development to the state-of-the-art technology of satellite imaging and the internet, precisely to bring these issues graphically home.
We have funded the Going For Green campaign, the Tidy Britain group and the eco-schools programme, and we are encouraging schools throughout the United Kingdom to improve the impact that they have on the local environment through activities involving children, teachers, governors and the local community.
In September, I will be launching the green code for schools, a CD-ROM developed by Going for Green to communicate the Government's "Are You Doing Your Bit?" campaign to schools, which is imaginative and effective, has been put together in partnership with teachers and is designed to absorb and involve pupils directly in green issues. At the same time, I shall write to head teachers, to stress our aim to support the sustainable development content of the national curriculum through the green code programme.
Earlier this year, I, with my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister and Madam Speaker, participated in the Children's Parliament on the environment, a positive initiative which Madam Speaker strongly supported, and which allowed young children to put their views about sustainability on the agenda. I commend to the hon. Gentleman, if he has not yet seen it, the action plan that emerged from that, the Government's response and the Hansard of their debate and Select Committee produced by Her Majesty's Stationery Office--whose headquarters is in my constituency--which I shall place in the Library.
Those debates show how passionate young children are about the world in which they are growing up, how keen they are to learn about how the environment, economy and society all link together in affecting our quality of life and the quality of life of people throughout the world, and how keen children are that the decisions that we make now mean that the world that they inherit as adults is in a fit state for them. They are also keen that they should have the skills and knowledge that they need to make decisions in all aspects of their lives that contribute to sustainable development.
I conclude by reinforcing the Government's determination to place sustainable development at the core of the national curriculum because it is so important to the future. Yet again, I reaffirm our readiness to listen to helpful contributions such as those made by the hon. Gentleman. I also reaffirm that the proof of the pudding will be in the eating as the curriculum rolls out. We have a massive programme for developing resources to pay for high-quality teacher training and a much wider range of resource materials. That will help teachers to help schools address those issues in a positive and constructive way.
"Education for sustainable development is about the learning needed to maintain and improve our quality of life and the quality of life for generations to come. It is about equipping individuals, communities, groups, businesses and government to live and act sustainably; as well as giving them an understanding of the environmental, social and economic issues involved. It is about preparing for the world in which we will live in the next century, and making sure that we are not found wanting"--
or learning in, through or about our environment, our society and our economy, with the specific aim of leaving the planet as we would wish to find it, or better. I think that that is a fine definition, and it is one with which the Government entirely associate themselves. That thinking has informed all our consideration on the future of the national curriculum.
"Education plays a significant part in the UK's Sustainable Development Strategy, and quality of life issues, including social exclusion, have a significant impact on the ability of schools to raise standards of achievement. The Council for Environmental Education is particularly pleased that this is reinforced within the Secretary of State's proposals . . . for the revised national curriculum in England. The Council for Environmental Education welcomes the
20 Jul 1999 : Column 1098Government's acknowledgment in recent policy documents and reports that education and sustainable development are interdependent."
The council is right, and I very much appreciate its statement to the effect that we have risen to the challenge in the curriculum that we have proposed.
"Both single and double science are weak, particularly at key stage 1 and 2, and need further strengthening, particularly with reference to biodiversity and interdependence."
I hope that that does not contradict what the Minister is saying but fleshes it out.
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