All students should leave school with some climate literacy irrespective of their subject and qualification choices

The RMetS climate literacy survey, 2022  demonstrates that a large proportion of school leavers in England don’t remember having been taught about climate change (46%) in their GCSE years. In addition, students are calling for quality climate education,  and employers identify a green skills gap in the UK workforce. The World Bank Group’s Education for Climate Action report  (2024) stresses the importance of education as an instrument for increasing climate mitigation and adaptation.
UNESCO’s Greening Curriculum Guidance (2024)  concludes “The world faces interconnected challenges, with the climate crisis looming as an existential threat. Addressing these challenges requires an education system that not only acknowledges these realities but actively prepares individuals to navigate them and innovate for a more sustainable future.”

Students should leave school with the ability to apply their knowledge, understanding and skills to the real world as it changes and develops as well as their personal situations and careers. Specifically, high quality climate education should allow students to develop climate literacy and green skills which students can apply to green careers and broader climate action in their personal and professional lives.

The curriculum should be flexible enough to adapt as understanding, technology, relevance and situation changes. Specifically, this relates to the state of the climate, climate impacts around the world and current issues relating to climate justice, politics, economics and communication as well as technological solutions to the climate crisis.

Climate education should make students concerned about climate change but hopeful, focussing on solutions and careers as laid out in the DfE Sustainability and Climate Change Education Strategy (2022), UNESCO’s Greening Curriculum Guidance (2024)

Students should be able to synthesise their learning in different topics and subjects.  Specifically, students should be able to apply their learning in geography and the sciences to climate change and sustainability contexts and examples in all subjects, and apply their maths, data and statistical skills to climate contexts in all subjects.

Climate change is a multi-disciplinary problem, impacting on all lives and careers, that requires a multidiscipline approach to both solutions and learning. It should therefore not just be taught in self-contained units (or even a separate subject) but should be integrated, where appropriate, throughout the curriculum in all subjects, by making links between learning in different subjects to develop a climate education which is holistic, strengthens and progresses, broadens learning and is not repetitive. Geography, Physics, Chemistry and Biology are the subjects where core understanding can be developed, which can be the expected knowledge on which application of that knowledge in all other subjects can be based, where appropriate. Maths, data and statistical skills underpin high quality climate education. 

Climate education in the curriculum report  and Easy Wins for Climate change education in England 

Teacher support and subject specific professional development is critical to develop both subject knowledge and subject pedagogy amongst the current and future teaching community. All teachers should be able to access training to improve their climate literacy as well as their understanding of how to appropriately deliver climate education in their teaching.

Many teachers don’t currently have the confidence to deliver climate education UCL survey of teachers in England 
The RMetS quality control work  with resource providers, publishers  and exam boards has revealed widespread misconceptions and out of date materials in use.