The goal of sustainable development is to enable all people throughout the world to satisfy their basic needs and improve the quality of their lives without compromising the quality of life for future generations.
Delivering the curriculum through sustainable development education
Developing our children and young people as global citizens through sustainable development education is a key context for learning within Curriculum for Excellence. Sustainability issues feature prominently in the experiences and outcomes and offer learners an opportunity to engage with complex ethical issues relating to climate change, social justice, interdependence, health and wellbeing and biodiversity.
In this regard sustainable development education is an ideal vehicle for interdisciplinary learning and can be used to bring relevance, depth, challenge and breadth to learning.
Embedding sustainability themes within the curriculum, and in the life of the school, develops our children and young people as global citizens and equips them with skills, values and attributes for learning, life and work. It is estimated that 60,000 to 90,000 new jobs will be created in the green sector in the next 10 to 15 years as Scotland makes a transition to a low carbon economy. This is in addition to the 80,000 green jobs that already exist. Using sustainable development education as a context for learning empowers learners to contribute to this process of change within society and also helps them to develop the skills required to access exciting career opportunities in the green sector.
If Scotland is to realise its ambitions to move towards a low carbon, zero waste future and deliver on the commitments outlined in Learning for Change: Scotland’s action plan for the second half of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development then it is also important that we promote effective collaboration between all education sectors including schools, youth and community learning, and further and higher education.
What is sustainable development education?
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