Climate change can teach children about race, national curriculum review told

Telegraph

19-03-2025

Climate change can be used to teach children about race, a national curriculum review has been told.
Global warming should be used to allow teachers and pupils to 'explore conversations about race', according to the Runnymede Trust.
The race equality think tank told a review into the curriculum commissioned by Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, that such discussions would allow pupils to discuss more openly the impact of race on them and its relationship to 'wider society'.
One aspect of the trust's recommendations is thought to be aimed at encouraging teachers to throw light on the unequal impact of climate change on different groups in society, such as in developing countries.
Its recommendation states: 'Subjects such as English and history, as well as discussions of climate change in science, should offer students the opportunity to explore conversations surrounding race and its relationship to wider society, as opposed to stifling students and teachers in the expression of opinion surrounding these themes.'
The submission is one of several seen by The Telegraph which argue that climate change and sustainability should form a more central part of the curriculum.
Teaching 'should be compulsory'
The National Climate Education Action Plan Group has stated that teaching about climate change and 'the biodiversity crisis' should be compulsory across several subjects, including science, geography and citizenship.
In its submission the group, hosted by Reading University, stated: 'Climate change and the biodiversity crisis impact many areas of human society and the natural world.
'It's therefore right that these topics should be taught across the curriculum, beginning with a strong foundation in science, geography and citizenship, crossing into subjects that allow us to develop and build climate solutions and throughout subjects that allow young people to express their fears and hopes for the future and their connectedness to the natural world through their creative expression.
'To achieve this, we need a curriculum that offers an improved, broad and compulsory climate and sustainability education.'
Ms Phillipson ordered the audit of England's education system within weeks of Labour's election win last year, pledging to 'breathe new life into our outdated curriculum'.
The review, which she promised would deliver a 'broader, richer, cutting-edge' curriculum, is the first in more than a decade.
Responding to hundreds of submissions, its interim findings, published on Tuesday by Prof Becky Francis, designated global warming as a key area of improvement for teaching, saying that the review would examine adding 'scientific and cultural knowledge' to the curriculum 'to meet the challenges of climate change'.
The interim findings also call for greater diversity, equality and inclusion.
The review will make final recommendations to the Government this autumn, with the shake-up expected to apply to all schools in England from next year.
It said that it hoped to do so 'without compromising the reliability of results' and the trust of schools, teachers, parents and pupils in qualifications.
Academies must take policy on board
However, it will also mean academies, which are currently allowed to divert from the national curriculum, will be forced to teach it for the first time and has prompted warnings that children will leave school 'less prepared' for the real world.
Among the submissions was also one from the Quakers, who said the impact of climate change and environmental breakdown should not be 'sanitised'.
They stated: 'While young people's climate anxiety is not to be underestimated, circumspection is not the solution.'
Wildlife and Countryside Link argued in its submission that the teaching of climate change could be used across the curriculum, such as applying data sets in maths to modelling and sustainable designs in D&T classes.
It said the principles of an environmentally sustainable circular economy could be taught in economics classes.
The Runnymede Trust has already called for a rethink on teaching about the British Empire, saying that history lessons were too focused on 'narrow, celebratory, accounts of 'our island story'.'
It called for a revised national curriculum to 'embed statutory topics on race, migration and the British Empire'.
In its full submission the trust criticised current Key Stage 2 history teaching for failing to highlight the 'contribution of migrant communities, their struggles for recognition, or the long history of settlement in this country' and missing out 'crucial parts of Britain's colonial history' or the 'histories of decolonisation across the globe'.