How curriculum subjects contribute to climate change and sustainability education
Global Action Plan has partnered with UCL’s Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Education, the National Association for Environmental Education and the Council for Subject Associations on a joint-initiative to develop a set of headline curriculum subject statements that specify how they support the Climate Change and Sustainability Education (CCSE) of school-aged children in England.
Context and rationale
The interim report of the DfE Curriculum and Assessment Review (CAR) indicated that issues related to climate change and sustainability are ‘on the table’, although the emphasis on ‘evolution not revolution’ has been consistently reasserted. There are currently no official indications that these issues are being viewed through a whole curriculum lens, despite many calls for this to be the case.
Our new joint-initiative, which we have invited England’s major subject associations to contribute to, seeks to maintain and build on the momentum of previous initiatives in the final phase before the CAR report is published in the autumn.
We also envisage that this work will be highly relevant and useful for subject working groups drafting new National Curriculum content during the next academic year (2025/26).
Our initiative builds on previous contributions from sector colleagues
Recent attempts to demonstrate the power of a whole curriculum approach in England include:
- Teach the Future’s Tracked Changes project (2023-24);
- UCL’s report, The role of subjects and subject associations in climate change and sustainability education in England (in partnership with the Council for Subject Associations and Natural History Museum) (2024);
- The Royal Meteorological Society’s Curriculum for Climate Literacy (2025).
Each document has made a particular and valuable contribution to the articulation of what a whole curriculum approach could look like. We would like to ensure that the momentum that these – and other – contributions have made is not lost as we enter the next phase of the CAR process.
In particular, to build on the contributions made to date, we think it would be helpful to:
- define the distinctive contribution of each subject to climate change, nature and sustainability education in as concise a format as possible, using wording that can potentially be included in future curriculum documents;
- include a focus on skills, capabilities and ways of being, as well as knowledge, where appropriate.
To frame these statements, we also propose recommending an overarching aims statement that sits across the whole curriculum. We plan to publish our proposed overarching aims statement and related subject curriculum statements in a standalone White paper, and as a follow up to the report that UCL published last year in partnership with the Council for Subject Associations and the Natural History Museum.
The purpose of the White paper will be to demonstrate why climate change and sustainability demands a whole curriculum approach and how incorporating climate change and sustainability education into subject aims is a workable and effective policy solution.
The White paper will be published in July 2025 and shared with CAR panel members and the Department for Education on release and with any relevant subject working groups next year.
In drafting the statements, we are asking how each subject can help young people to, for example:
- Appreciate that they are part of, rather than separate from, the natural world.
- Build a closer connection to and respect for the natural world.
- Understand what the climate and/or nature crises are, why they are happening, what the consequences are, and what can be done.
- Develop sustainability skills such as empathy, critical thinking, adaptation and imagination.
- Feel empowered and motivated to act for sustainability and the climate.
- Know how to live more sustainably and develop the skills and desire to do so.
- Recognise the inequitable impacts of climate change locally and globally and the case for striving for greater equality.
- Appreciate different ways of being in the world.
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