2021/2 Objectives
While the rollout of Academies and the financialisation of further education has redefined the nature of education, there are multiple opportunities for educational establishments and the councils to lead by example and initiate activities that raise awareness and knowledge. These include:
While the rollout of Academies and the financialisation of further education has redefined the nature of education, there are multiple opportunities for educational establishments and the councils to lead by example and initiate activities that raise awareness and knowledge. These include:
- Align with Teach the Future demands:
- Students need to be taught about the climate emergency and ecological crises: how they are caused, what we can do to mitigate them and what our future lives and jobs are going to look like due to them. Sustainability and these crises need to become key content in all subject areas. Educators need to be trained in how to teach about these difficult topics in a way that empowers students, and they need funding and resources to do this.
- The UK needs a workforce able to bring us to net-zero emissions and make us world leaders in sustainable technologies. Therefore, vocational courses need to include the green skills needed to achieve this.
- Our education buildings play an essential role in how and what we learn, by retrofitting them to net-zero emissions by 2030, we can create green jobs across the country and inspire students to live sustainably.
- Both Councils must act like it is an emergency; adapt the models of communication used during the pandemic to communicate the science and implications of climate change to residents alongside communicating potential solutions.
- Both Councils should roll out training to all staff using opportunities such as those presented by the Climate Reality Project or Carbon Literacy.
- Rather than limiting communications to articles in Council publications, both Councils should create a strategic communications plan along the lines of that proposed in the Dorset Council’s climate and ecological emergency strategy. This should include facilitating the provision of awareness training, such as that mentioned in 3 above, to all communities, organisations and businesses across their respective areas.
- Explore and exploit opportunities through the LEP and the County’s Further Educational establishments to provide training and retraining in transformational careers and to prepare people for the green economy.
- Establish Community Emergency Centres, Climate Clubs or Climate Cafes (see Justice for All and What’s Next chapters). These community-led organisations would find shared space to engage communities and neighbourhoods not just in raising awareness of the global and local implications of environmental breakdown, but also draw in people to develop community-led schemes to build resilience (maybe identifying local opportunities for community gardens or rewilding projects) and provide direct community input to elected officials on local solutions.
- Use the approaches developed by the Transition Town movement (see Land Use chapter) to bring people together to develop local resilience, aligning with initiatives such as the Dorset Green Living Project (see Power Down chapter).