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We're campaigning for Education Secretary Gillian Keegan and the Department for Education to implement our 4 specific policy asks:
You can read our full asks for more details. We hope that these asks will achieve our vision of broad climate and environmental education.
Our Climate Education Bill (in England and Wales) is currently making its way through parliament. If passed, it would integrate sustainability throughout the curriculum. For more information on the bill and what it would mean, read our briefing for MPs.
You can get in touch with us at england@teachthefuture.uk.
Charlie Clift
"Surely, not withstanding the fact that we are tiny, fragile things, a moat of dust, orbiting 1 star amongst 400 billion, we must consider ourselves and our world to be inconceivably valuable." - Professor Brian Cox
Eleanor AM
‘Now we’re going to do the most human thing of all: attempt something futile with a ton of unearned confidence and fail spectacularly!’ – Michael, ‘The Good Place’ 2×10
Evie Rouxel
‘Activism is the rent I pay for living on this planet’ Alice Walker
Jamie Agombar
Groucho Marx. "Why should I care about future generations? What have they ever done for me?"
Jamie Burrell
Jodie Bailey-Ho
“if the kids are united then we'll never be divided”
Josh Tregale
There is no right way to protest because that's what protest is. It can't be considered 'right' by the system that it's protesting. - Trevor Noah
Jude Daniel Smith
Every man is guilty of the good he did not do' - Voltaire
Karis Mcintyre
“The secret to doing anything is believing you can do it” - Bob Ross
Natasha Pavey
“For there is always light. If only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it.” - Amanda Gorman
Niamh Crisp-O'Brien
"All I know is that I’m here. And I’m alive. And I’m not alone." - Solitaire, Alice Oseman
Phoebe L. Hanson
"Be aware of the place where you are brought to tears. That's where your heart is and where your heart is, is where your treasure lies" from the book The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Quinn Runkle
Dr Martin Luther King Jr "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."
Scarlett Westbrook
"Cause you never think that the last time is the last time. You think there will be more. You think you have forever, but you don't." -Meredith Grey, Grey’s Anatomy
Thiziri Boussaid
"No matter what happens in life, be good to people. Being good to people is a wonderful legacy to leave behind. - Taylor Swift"
Report on the estimated costs of achieving Net Zero in Primary and Secondary Schools in the United Kingdom. Prepared by Energise (pro-bono) for Teach the Future. September 2023.
Teach the Future responded to a letter recieved from Education Secretary Gillian Keegan, which we found to be out of touch with the reality of the education system.
June 14, 2022
In this paper we present an analysis of the sustainability and climate change strategy for education and children's services systems in England, produced by the Department for Education. Using critical discourse analysis, we juxtapose qualitative data collected from >200 youth teachers and teacher educators in the context of co-creating a manifesto for education and environmental sustainability. Through analysis of these two datasets, we evaluate the government's proposals for climate education and sustainability. We find that the strategy foregrounds economic concerns, with educational priorities driven by the ‘net zero’ policy agenda, and an over-reliance on increased science-focused knowledge and skills. The strategy suggests an absence of governmental responsibility and attention to the political dimensions of climate change. This is in contrast to stakeholder perspectives which see economic priorities as part of the problem and call for pro-environmental action at all levels, including from policymakers. The strategy has a depoliticising effect as it introduces additional demands for teachers and schools without the associated enabling policy environment. We argue that the strategy runs the risk of becoming a placebo for policy, with the appearance of ‘doing something’ whilst failing to address the fundamental policy problem.
May 1, 2022
18 or over? Don’t forget to vote in the 2022 May local elections this Thursday (May 5th)!!
May 1, 2022
“Without climate education, I don’t see the value in going to school at all,” says Eleanor Andrade May, a quantitative social science student at the University of Sheffield (p 4). This is a disconcerting statement. When students are unable to see the connection between their studies and their future, it suggests a deep flaw in our education system. Fundamentally, we are failing our young people. But young people are taking action. Eleanor is part of Teach the Future, a youth-led campaign that aims to repurpose the UK’s entire education system around the climate emergency, and this action makes for a very positive statement. Teach the Future’s vision is for broad climate education in the UK. Futurum’s vision is to help students connect the subjects they are learning in school to real-world research projects, all of which aim to solve pressing societal needs. Where there is vision, there is action, and this is how to teach the future.
April 21, 2022
Our response to the DfE's commitments to climate change and sustainability.
December 2, 2021
At the start of November, the Department for Education announced their new draft strategy plan for climate and sustainability. While it touches on some of our asks, it falls short of what is needed in three key areas from our Teach the Future asks.
November 26, 2021
Climate change will inevitably big a huge part in our children's future, so how do we teach them about it, while still protecting their innocence? On this week's episode of Sky News ClimateCast, host Sarah Hewson is joined by Teach the Future campaigner Scarlett Westbrook, who tells us how she's on her way to changing the school education system to have climate change embedded into the curriculum.
November 26, 2021
This week, the first-ever student-written education bill was presented to UK Parliament. The English Climate Emergency Education Bill was brought forward by 25-year-old Nadia Whittome, MP for Nottingham East and youngest current member of Parliament. 17-year-old Scarlett Westbrook, a prominent youth climate activist and Teach the Future member, was one of the students involved in putting the bill together.
November 25, 2021
A new climate education bill has been called for matters relating to climate change and sustainability to be integrated throughout the curriculum in primary and secondary schools and included in vocational training courses.
November 23, 2021
Nadia Whittome told MPs her bill to integrate climate change and sustainability into the curriculum would ‘prepare young people for the future'. She said that if the education system “isn’t preparing young people to help mitigate and deal with the impacts of climate change, then it is failing them”.
November 23, 2021
A bill calling for the climate crisis to be taught across the whole of the school curriculum is set to be tabled in parliament, with those involved saying it is the first-ever to be written by students.