Earlier this month, the Department of Education (DfE) published a report on recent school leavers’ climate literacy and the results show one thing - climate and nature education reform is imperative.
In the first half of 2024, the DfE surveyed then year 11s in England to determine how much they understand about climate change. The survey was designed in a way that it could be repeated to assess the impacts of any change to the education system. It looked at aspects of climate literacy including the causes of climate change, impacts of climate change, mitigation solutions, adaptation solutions, and how to find credible information about climate.
A lot of the key findings, while maybe not shocking at this point, were disappointing. Bearing in mind that Science is a core subject and one of the subjects the DfE states over and over that climate education is and should remain siloed into, only 55% of respondents could remember receiving climate education recently. Now, if 100% of GCSE students are taking Science, how is it acceptable that the curriculum allows for over half of them not to recall recently being taught about climate change recently?
This is not the fault of students or teachers. Students are not in charge of the curriculum, and neither are most teachers, they are not the ones deciding which topics students are taught, the DfE is. This is not a problem of “uninterested”, “lazy”, or “ignorant” students, especially when the proportions of students struggling with climate literacy are so high.
One of the basic principles which allows people to understand the importance, science and severity of climate change is climate vs weather. However, only 31% of year 11s heading into their GCSEs, could differentiate between the two. On top of this, 37% of students believe global temperatures will cool if we just stop emitting greenhouse gases (GHG) when, in fact, global temperatures will stagnate if GHG emissions are stopped and will only cool when GHGs are removed from the atmosphere.
Students did show better understanding of some topics such as the major indicators of climate change and the impacts which can be most clearly linked to climate change.
When it came to dealing with climate change, most students had poor knowledge or understanding of both the possible solutions, and what we are doing now as individuals, a nation, and a global community. Only 34% of students knew what climate mitigation (addressing the root cause of climate change) meant and how it differs from climate adaptation (changing our behaviour or practices in response to the impact of climate change). Understanding climate mitigation is crucial if we want today’s students to prevent and reverse climate change tomorrow. Additionally, 72% believe that less than 30% of the UK’s energy supply comes from renewable sources (it’s actually 43%). A common misconception among people of all ages is that renewable energy sources are not reliable and could not realistically power a country on their own. Perhaps if more students knew how much renewables contribute to the UK energy system today - which suffers blackouts and failures incredibly rarely - they would have more trust in renewables and increasing their usage.
This report makes it abundantly clear that students need better climate education and that it must be integrated into all subjects - the one mandatory subject containing climate education is not enough.
To read more about which areas of climate literacy students’ are struggling with - including the biggest emitters, the meaning of net zero, most vulnerable areas vs areas with the biggest temperature change and the impacts on nature - read the full report here.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash