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LONDON: Nearly three-quarters of British teachers say they haven’t had enough training to educate students about climate change, the implications of global warming and the best way to deal with them, a poll showed Tuesday.
Although 90% of teachers thought climate change education should be mandatory, 41% said it was rarely or never mentioned in their schools, according to a study by the youth-led campaign group Teach the Future.
Seven out of 10 teachers said they had not received adequate training on the subject.
In schools where children did learn about climate change, it was mostly limited to science and geography lessons, with only one in 20 teachers agreeing that the topic was an integral part of many areas of the curriculum.
Teach the Future activist Dorothy Joddrell said education did not prepare young people for the future.
“Our lives will be significantly affected by climate change and therefore our education should prepare us to adapt to the climate crisis, empower us to contribute to its solutions and enable us to achieve climate justice,” he said.
“To ensure that all students can benefit from climate education, the government must make it a key part of the entire curriculum, not set aside most of it as an optional subject.”
The Department of Education was not immediately available for comment.
Teach the Future, which aims to improve climate change education, was started by a group of high school students after the school climate strikes in 2019 led by Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg.
Education has been singled out as a key element in addressing climate change by the United Nations education body, UNESCO, amid warnings from scientists that world leaders are not taking the necessary steps to curb warming. global.
But research from the National Union of Students in 2019 showed that only 4% of school-age children in England felt they knew a lot about climate change.
The Teach the Future study included the results of two surveys, one with a sample of 7,682 teachers and the other with a sample of 503. Reuters
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