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Sustainable development webcast
Tuesday, 27 October, 2009.
Introduction
Jake Reynolds, Senior Advisor for the DCSF talked to TeacherNet about how schools are embracing sustainable development, the ways in which they are doing so and how this fits into the curriculum. We also take a look at Charles Dickens Primary School and find out how they have begun the process of being a sustainable school through gardening, cooking and eating their own vegetables, expanding on site and taking ownership of a road which gives them more sustainable land and provides a larger more secure environment for the students to utilise.
Background
The Children's Plan and the UK sustainable development strategy
The Government's strategy for children and young
people, the Children's Plan, aims to make the UK the best place in
the world for our children and young people to grow up in.
This powerful vision sits alongside another visionary strategy, the UK
sustainable development strategy, Securing the Future, which aims to enable all people
throughout the world to satisfy their basic needs and enjoy a better quality of
life without compromising the quality of life of future generations.
The DCSF's sustainable schools strategy
The strategies encompassed in the Children's Plan and the UK sustainable development strategy are complementary: children cannot grow up in a stable and secure world unless ways are found to improve our well-being without destroying our most precious resource, the planet. This is the context for the DCSF's sustainable schools strategy.
The Government would like every school to be a sustainable school by 2020 and a National Framework has been established to guide schools towards this aim. You can read more about this in the National Framework for Sustainable Schools section of this website.
Charles Dickens Primary School
Eco School
Learning about and looking after the environment is central to the ethos of Charles Dickens. They were the first school in Southwark to be awarded the "Green Flag" from Eco Schools and were runners-up in the Sustainable Schools category in the 2007 DCSF Teaching awards.
