Climate Change Survey results

The DfE has published the results of a survey of Climate Literacy amongst school leavers.

Syliva Knight of the Royal Meteorological Society has responded on her LinkedIn account. She was one of the authors of the report:

The DfE have just published the results of the 2023/ 2024 Climate Literacy Survey of school leavers (year 11 students), which builds on the initial survey we developed in 2022. Together with an expert group of Society members, we supported the development of the additional 50 questions which were included in the survey this year and we also contributed to the analysis of the data collected.

UNESCO’s Greening Curriculum guidance states that high quality climate education should develop an “action-oriented, holistic, scientifically accurate, justice-driven and lifelong learning approach to climate change”.

This survey is a very important piece of evidence about the state of climate awareness amongst our young people, as well as the key gaps in the climate education they are currently receiving.

One clear message that has emerged from the survey every year, is how poorly the 1.5°C/ 2°C key climate goals are understood, as many respondents thought that the climate had already warmed more than this and most failed to select the correct definition.

She also talks about some misconceptions, both of which I tackle in my own teaching.

Some specific issues related to the current National Curriculum in England were highlighted by the survey. For example, respondents had poor awareness of the fact that the expansion of water as it warms has contributed roughly as much to sea level rise as the melting of ice. This argues for the need for a curriculum which encourages the application of knowledge and understanding (in this case, that liquids expand when they are heated) to real world contexts or across subjects (i.e. from science to geography).

Another example relates to the current KS3/ 4 geography curriculum where the disproportionate amount of time devoted to teaching past climate change and in particular the Milankovitch cycles seems to have led to respondents overestimating the impact of natural forcing mechanisms on recent climate change.

Plenty of interest in this report.