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Abstract
This paper reports on a study that was a response to a call from the UK government's Department of Children, Schools and Families for research into the link between the work of schools that address sustainability and the UK's national sustainable development indicators. This was part of the government's sustainable schools initiative, developed as a contribution to the UN's Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. The paper uses the four capitals model of Herman Daly and Donella Meadows to critically examine, firstly, how a school might make such a contribution to sustainable development, and, then, how we might come to know how effectively this is progressing. In doing this, the paper builds on Webster's work about the stages that a sustainable school might go through in its development, and the result is three sets of process descriptors to guide a school's thinking about what it might do. These are presented in the sense of an embryonic and sketchy map to the terrain, rather than as a set of instructions or a detailed plan to follow.
Notes
1. These links are now less obvious, as emphases on such issues have diminished owing to a change of government in 2010.
2. Two reports (Ofsted, Citation2010; Keating et al., Citation2009) have highlighted the link between sustainability and curriculum, as have thoughtful new books such as Webster and Johnson (Citation2009). The helpfulness of ideas around action competence, a concept that was evolved in Denmark in the context of health and environmental education in the 1980s, has yet to be appreciated in the UK (Jensen & Schnack, Citation1997).
3. Quoted without citation in Meadows (Citation1998).
4. http://www.defra.gov.uk/sustainable/government/progress/data-resources/sdiyp.htm. These include CO2 emissions per end user, renewable energy, household waste per person, bird populations, river quality, economic output, fear of crime, childhood poverty, healthy life expectancy, road accidents, and so on. These indicators are now (2013) being revised through public consultation.
5. The UN's Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), and initiatives such as ARIES, have also laboured long and hard in this vineyard, though to no great practical effect. See http://www.unece.org/env/esd/SC.EGI.htm and http://www.unece.org/env/esd/SC.EGI.htm
6. Whilst there is definitely something in this idea, and its simplicity appeals, the issue of tokenism is acute, and there would need to be other indicators indicating how effective the indicator was at indicating.
8. Another way to express this is to refer to the steps that schools can take on their institutional journey towards being more sustainable. There are advantages to this language, not least that it locates the agency and responsibility firmly with the school, but also that it embodies movement. Despite this, the notion of stages is persisted with here, as this was the original language used.
9. Rather than seeing sustainable development as separable into these three components, a more useful way of viewing it is: The environment – the limited (and ultimately limiting) framework within which development takes place. Social development – the purpose of sustainable development. The economy – the means whereby development will be effected. The advantage of this is that the link with sustainable development is not lost even though the idea has been disaggregated. It clearly links back to Brundtland and the World Conservation Strategy, and makes immediate sense.
10. Sometimes, a fifth capital ‘financial’ can be included in arguments similar to these. Here, whilst the need for financial capital in appropriate forms is assumed, issues relating to it are not addressed.
11. It is, of course, impossible to be a sustainable school if it is an island in a sea of business as usual, and it follows that there will need to be a degree of co-evolution between school, community and wider society if significant developments are to take place.
12. There is insufficient space here to re-emphasise the value of a systems approach to thinking about and understanding sustainability. The need to do this is, however, assumed throughout.
13. Criteria for setting up such links might include that: they are founded on mutual learning, there is a parity of esteem between partners, there are openly negotiated aims and objectives and a commitment to setting stereotypes aside, and all young people in the schools are able to participate and benefit.
14. Space does not allow an exploration of the vital, but complex, concept of social capital. See, for example, Putnam (Citation2000) and http://www.nationalcollege.org.uk/index/leadershiplibrary/leadingschools/working-in-partnership/ecm/school-families-communities/understanding-social-capital.htm for key aspects of the argument.
15. Of course, not all behaviour change is necessarily beneficial – even where it does appear to be reducing a burden. Webster and Johnson (Citation2009) make the point that changing what we do just to do less harm is not what we need to be aiming for. Rather, it needs to be a question of building ‘benign cycles which restore capital’ (Webster, pers. comm.).
16. There is also a growing understanding of how young people's learning and well-being can benefit from a focus on the sustainable school. See Barratt Hacking, Scott, and Lee's research (Citation2010) for the DCSF.
17. This set of attributes has been developed from The Melbourne Experience which, although originally focused on graduates, has, if appropriately interpreted for age and experience, a generic applicability across sectors and phases. See: http://www.unimelb.edu.au/about/attributes.html. These are similar to the six areas of QCDA's personal learning and thinking skills (PLTS: independent enquirers, creative thinkers, reflective learners, team workers, self-managers & effective participants); see: http://curriculum.qcda.gov.uk/key-stages-3-and-4/skills/plts/index.aspx; and to the ideas set forth in the Cambridge Primary review (Alexander, Citation2009).
18. These have been developed from work presented at a TIDE∼ seminar in 2004 – see http://www.tidec.org/Tidetalk/articles/Growing%20ideas.html – and from recent research for the DCSF (Barratt Hacking, Scott, & Lee, Citation2010).
19. In February 2010, the Education and Training Inspectorate in Northern Ireland published: Effective Practice in Education for Sustainable Development in a Sample of Primary, Post-primary and Special Schools in Northern Ireland. This report uses the seven key concepts although it repeats the error first made by QCA by terming these key concepts of ESD rather than sustainable development.
20. This detail is set out at http://www.bath.ac.uk/cree/publications/index.html
21. A range of opportunities for doing this are available, including the Botanic Gardens Education Network www.bgen.org.uk – Breathing Places Schools: www.bbc.co.uk/breathingplaces/schools – an ecosystems approach: www.defra.gov.uk/wildlife-pets/policy/natural-environ/eco-approach.htm – and the Biodiversity Benchmark scheme: http://www.wildlifetrusts.org/index.php?section=corporate:biodiversity:whatisit.
22. This will include using procurement policy to influence supply chains.