Teach the Future England

Our English campaign has 3 asks:

1. A government-commissioned review into how the whole of the English formal education system is preparing students for the climate emergency and ecological crisis.

2. Inclusion of the climate emergency and ecological crisis in teacher training and a new professional teaching qualification.

3. An English Climate Emergency Education Act

We believe these asks will bring about the necessary change to our education system.

You can read our research, bill, costings and ask explanations here.

Our English campaign is run by two organisations, the UK Student Climate Network and Students Organising for Sustainability UK.

The team:

What we've done:

Launch day

12/10/2019

In front of a room of educators and campaigners at the NEU Climate Emergency Conference, we launched our campaign. Talks about the possible collaboration between UKSCN and SOS-UK had only begun a few months earlier but in this short amount of time, we were able to come up with 6 practical asks to reform our education system.

Petition

14/10/2019

Our petition for A review into how the education system prepares students for the climate crisis got 7,413 signatures before Parliament was closed on the 6th November.

Persuading the parties

12/12/2019

In the lead up to the General Election, we were able to push some of the parties towards stronger climate education, with the Labour manifesto mentioning a review of the curriculum, and the Green Party manifesto specifically mentioning our English Climate Emergency Education Act.

Crowdfunder

05/02/2020

Thanks to 552 kind supporters we were able to raise a whopping £11,256 through our Crowdfunder, which had an original target of £4,000.

Drafted a bill

12/02/2020

We worked with a lawyer to write the very first education bill written by students, the Climate Emergency Education Bill. A lot of work went into our thinking about what our bill should say, including what acts of parliament we needed to change, and what amounts of money we will need to do what needs to be done.

Letter writing campaign

/02/2020

Over 50 MPs received letters about our asks from their constituents, and that dialogue continues, including detailed correspondence with Nick Gibb, Minister for Schools Standards, via Michael Gove, via one of his constituents. This dialogue has helped raise the profile of climate education with policymakers.

Press appearances

25/02/2020

47 students in the Teach the Future team ran an event in parliament to introduce our campaign and bill to MPs. We think that, in total, over 70 MPs and peers joined us with fantastic cross-party support.

Meeting with a minister

09/03/2020

Unfortunately, Zamzam’s meeting with Gavin Williamson, Secretary of State for Education got cancelled due to an emergency COBRA meeting for the COVID-19 pandemic. However, she still had a pre-arranged meeting with the University Minister, Michelle Donelan, who attend our reception. She gave us some advice on where to go next, including Nick Gibb, conversations that still continue into April 2020.

50th supporting organisation

28/03/2020

World’s Largest Lesson became our 50th organisational supporter, adding to the amazing group of organisations, joining us on our campaign. We could not have got this far without all of our amazing supporters!

£30k funding secured

15/04/2020

Teach the Future secured two incredibly generous donations to aid us in the continuation of the campaign. This allowed us to employ 4 of our students and a member of staff from the National Union of Students on secondment to allow TtF the capacity it needed to continue our exciting ventures into the future.