Pupils in schools across the UK are now being taught about climate change thanks to the help of entrepreneur Melanie Harwood.
Climate change is not a core part of the school curriculum for children under 14 (at least not yet anyway!) but teachers are signing up in their droves to an online course which enables them to become UN accredited climate change teachers.
The course is accessible through eduCCate Global, a business co-founded by Melanie after she persuaded the United Nations to let her update and re-package some of its training material.
According to Sky News, 600 teachers have already signed up to complete the course which will enable them to teach pupils about climate change inside the classroom.
Here at the Field Studies Council we think this is excellent news. In fact Mark Bolland, the FSC’s leading expert on climate change, is among the small number of people who have already completed the climate change course and received UN accreditation. He said:
As one of the leading organisations for environmental education, the more teachers we have raising awareness of the climate emergency within school the better and we think those teachers leading the way on this are doing a fantastic job. Our tutors here at FSC are passionate about every aspect of environmental learning and can support teachers on this learning journey by providing on the ground experiences to pupils to back-up what they are being taught in the classroom.
Mark Bolland
“We have a whole network of field study centres spread across the UK which schools can visit to learn and understand first-hand how climate change is affecting the environment. Indeed some of our centres near the coast such as Flatford Mill in Suffolk and Slapton Ley in Devon are being directly impacted by rising sea levels. These centres have been working on climate reduction for almost 30 years and they have become pioneers when it comes to changing the behaviours and actions of staff and visitors.”
Mark Bolland