Green Ink on the Curriculum Review

Professor Becky Francis has led on the Review for the English National Curriculum & Assessments for the UK Government. The Interim Report has just come out and she has commented that she does not support calls for ‘revolution not evolution’ from ‘non-educationalists’.

I guess I’m one of those ‘non-educationalists’. I have two teaching qualifications, managed education programmes in two national cultural institutions, and have worked on perhaps 200 learning projects since the early 1990s. But I’m sure I don’t count because I’m calling for a completely transformative approach to education in the context of the Earth Crisis.

I’ve annotated key parts of the Interim Report, mainly the Executive Summary, with green ink. (Green ink is the term British journalists use for rants by people with bees in their bonnets.)

Page 1 of Executive Summary with annotations and my Earth Crisis graphic

My annotations on page 1 (above) say:

• This is framed with the dominant narrative of human progress and individual success.
• When there are references to society and economy I expect to see the environment too.
• The reference to ‘adapt & thrive’ is missing the chance to acknowledge the Earth Crisis.
• The best life chances for young people are threatened by Earth Crisis impacts i.e. societal & ecological collapse, so raising barriers to educational attainment are not enough. Societal safety nets from radical redistribution plus emergency adaptive measures are vital. Schools need to be part of this transformation.
• [As well address the civic and economic needs of our wide world] we need to address ecological needs.

I’ve also dropped in my graphic that explains how the Earth Crisis is both ecological overshoot and social shortfall.

Annotations on p2 of the Exec Summary including my Earth Talk journey

My annotations on page 2 say:

• Continuing with segregated disciplines and a knowledge-rich approach suppresses the opportunity to focus on the development of capacities of children across disciplines through situated active learning driven by the needs of their bodies, their passions, their communities and environments.
• People with SEND, disabilities, transgender identities, Black identities etc are all vulnerable in the worsening Earth Crisis, as we see domination of democracies by supremacists / fascists. There are intersecting vulnerabilities that lead e.g. to homelessness, malnutrition and low immunity.
• This [about some issues with content] avoids specifying the particular subjects affected e.g. Arts & Humanities, which are so helpful for understanding how humans have interacted with environments, and cultivating empathy and imagination.
• Inclusion of young people’s identities and views in context of the Earth Crisis, means acknowledging how radically this threatens any sense of continuity of their futures. Compassion for them means completely rethinking the structures, relationships and curriculum of schooling. It must also allow for the differentiation of individuals in terms of their generational traumas, disadvantages and vulnerabilities in times of crisis.
• How else can we even scratch the surface of developing the extraordinary capacities of imagination, collaboration, innovation and physical work required of young adults as disasters, conflicts and displacement hit our planet?
• This transformative kind of thinking is out of scope for the Curriculum Review. However, at least we can consider an integrated person-centred approach to learning in response to the Earth Crisis. For example, my course Earth Talk is structured around a learning journey, moving people from: Sensing & Framing to; Sense-making and Discovery; Meaning-making and Empathy; Imagination of future possibilities and; getting Activated.

I’ve also dropped in my graphic about the Earth Talk journey.

My annotations on page 3 of the Executive Summary say:

• This headline acknowledges only social and technological change. Technology is addressed first as a key driver of change, with special attention given to the rise of AI. In fact, the rise of AI is not separate from the systemic and political aggravators of the Earth Crisis. Digital technology is being applied to the extraction of nature, the exploitation of people and the fraudulent accumulation of wealth by large corporations and billionaires. These actors are taking over democracies, as we see in the rapid coup of the US public sector, the disregard of its constitution, and alliances of the US with Russia, Israel and oil-rich Middle Eastern nations. Their explicit intention is the proliferation of fossil fuel extraction and ecocide, which will hasten the devastating impacts of the Earth Crisis on people and wild species.
• “Global social & environmental challenges…” is an extremely non-descript and non-political way to hint at the Earth Crisis.
• T Levels are disastrous. Vocational education needs more variety & clarity in areas such as health, food, ecology and engineering that will be vital for climate resilience and ecological health.
• Vocational and careers education needs expanding to all learners, so that young people can benefit from more active and meaningful learning. This does not have to mean placements in workplaces. It means experiences for more students that are: informed by geophysical reality, more biophilic and responsive to local ecologies, more future-facing innovation, and more caring for all members of a community.

I’ve also dropped in my graphic inspired by the Ikigai on ‘what is mine to do’ in the Earth Crisis.

Annotations of page 5 of the Exec Summary, including my addition of a cartoon “This young koala has a mental health problem”

My annotations of page 5 of the Exec Summary say:

• Planning to drill into each subject will evade opportunities to understand more about the changing context and the need for interdisciplinary learning.
• The only specific feature of a rapidly changing world mentioned here is that it is AI-enabled.
• Hopefully, they will consider how the requirement for good passes in Maths & English GCSE creates stress for students less able in symbolic & abstract subjects. There is less time for them to spend on practical & creative subjects they enjoy and excel at.

Annotations of page 26 of the Main report.

I also annotated page 26, the page of the Main Report that mentions the social and environmental challenges we face. The chart in this image above is part of the report. My annotations say:

• The first time the report mentions the strong public call for sustainability and climate science to be on the curriculum.
• The narrative here that the curriculum must ‘keep pace’ reflects the discourse that life is always developing or progressing, that we are in a Global Race between nations, in which children are training to be the runners.
• While this is the only part of the report that deals with environmental challenges, it only gives it a passing mention. The rest of this section focuses on digital and financial skills, reflecting parental aspirations for clean, safe, white-collar work.
• This survey does not provide many options for the kinds of activities useful for activation and resilience in response to the Earth Crisis such as: Gardening; Animal care; Food growing and cooking; Recycling / sustainability activities.

And, in summary:

• This review is inadequate and incomplete.
• It does not acknowledge the Earth Crisis as a crisis of cultural discourses and information wars, which education can play a strong role in combatting.
• It does not reflect the need for a transformative response in anticipation of the suffering that young adults and future generations will experience due to Earth Crisis impacts.
• It makes no mention of the experience of recent migrants & refugees, affected by war, land-grabbing or climate impacts, also affected by racist attitudes.
• The word ‘climate’ occurs once, only to reflect a strong demand for climate science (rather than reflecting Department & Government views).

Here are a few further thoughts, having ranted with my green ink:

• I am glad that Culture has been noted alongside Science as helpful in the context of social and environmental challenges. (If Cultural educators — with knowledge of environmental issues — can be invited to shape the detail, this will be great.)
• There are significant structural issues with a subject-driven curriculum, and a lack of opportunity for interdisciplinary work. For example, Geography does not draw enough on environmental history, and History does not engage enough with environmental factors such as land use change and sustainable innovations in the past.
• There is a lack of reference to values, ethics and compassion. Once the Earth Crisis is fully acknowledged, one can see the role of Religious Education to broaden beyond the doctrines of monotheism to learn about cultural anthropology, indigenous lifeways and ecological ethics. One can see that ‘Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education’ needs to broaden ‘life skills’ to mean ‘caring for life’ (all lives, when they are threatened).