A new survey from Erasmus+ School Education Gateway has shown that the UK is not the only country with bad climate education as Italy remains the only EU country to have made climate change education compulsory in schools across the curriculum.
The survey of 36 European countries found that:
- Schools should be responsible for teaching about climate change
- Current curricula do not sufficiently address it
- Even though the subject can be easily integrated into subjects outside of the sciences and geography
- Lack of training and resources are the key obstacles to teachers’ including the subject in lessons
This is all really interesting, and the results are very similar to our previous research:
- 57% of students want to learn more about sustainable development
- Just 4% of pupils feel that they know a lot about climate change;
- 42% of young people aged 9-18 say they have learnt a little, hardly anything or nothing about the environment at school;
- 68% want to learn more about the environment and climate change;
- 49% would like to be more involved in projects or activities that help the environment;
- 75% of teachers feel they haven’t received adequate training to educate students about climate change;
- 69% of teachers think there should be more teaching about climate change in UK schools;
- 71% (of UK adults) said learning about climate change should be part of the school curriculum.
Our new UK teacher survey will be published soon.
