Why climate education is a safeguarding issue

I say this. I repeat this at conferences and at meetings. And I’m just not sure that school leaders get it – because I would have been one of those school leaders and I know the competing pressures. But I stand by it completely. Teaching our children about the climate crisis is not only scientifically needed and morally expected – it’s a safeguarding issue. 

This then is a bit of whistlestop tour of this theme, with links to explore further.

Important yes? But safeguarding? 

Consider some of the issues that we already deem as important as safeguarding… the rupture in our climate will affect so much of the future that we need to get this right now. And we need to equip our students with the knowledge and resilience to face the future.

Health

Health education, from sexual health through to nutrition is taught in schools. Why? Because we know that our children need to make the right choices. Because a healthy citizenry is less cost to our health systems and because happy and healthy workers are better for the economy. We also know that the Climate Crisis will be detrimental to health – an increase in extreme weather, an change in diet, scarcity of food, pollution, wildfires, mental health and anxiety. It is our duty to ensure that we as equipped for these changes as possible.

Of course that leads directly to safety…

Keeping Children Safe is a huge, huge part of what schools do. From ‘stranger danger’ through to cyber security. We talk about the physical risks to danger. And we know that the Climate Crisis makes extreme weather more intense and frequent. Ways to mitigate this must be taught, and modelled, by schools.

Inequalities

When I was at school we talked about ‘life chances’ – how poverty impacts you and your family. How it can restrict your choices, shape your holiday destinations, impact your earnings and have a detrimental affect on your health. Climate change will do all of this – and will accelarate existing inequalities. We counter this by not only doing what we can now to reduce emissions, but also ensuring that the next generation are aware of what they can do as well.

Missing education

We know the pressure on schools to keep children in school. The fines, the ‘carrots’. Well – extreme weather is already keeping children from school. Work for The Carbon Literacy project meant I held focus groups to talk to headteachers about the impacts of the climate crisis on their school and I was shocked to hear about the way that winds, heat and floods have already had an impact on their school population. Maybe it has already impacted your school?

A short blog, yes, but an important one to emphisise to school leaders that it not just the science. Giving the next generation the tools to tackle what’s coming is more than just facts and figures and reducing carbon. It’s about how to handle heatwaves, how to tackle inequality, renewable technology, active travel, growing your own food, reusing materials, and so on. Hope this proves useful for you!