The State of Sustainable Education provides an overview of various studies, facts and figures of the extent to which schools are engaged in learning for sustainable development. In general, the first State of Sustainable Education shows that learning for sustainable development is a topic on the agenda of governments, sector councils and educational institutions. In secondary and higher vocational education, this is mainly explained by the increasing demand from practice partners for more attention to sustainability in (vocational) education. But the subject is also on the agenda in primary education. 56% of elementary school and 59% of secondary schools pay attention to sustainable development on an ad hoc or project basis. For example, by joining action days or participating in sustainability programs.
Anchoring lags
While we see a growing focus on learning for sustainable development in all levels of education, true integral anchoring across the breadth of the education system is still far from happening. Research shows that only 15% of primary and secondary schools have anchored sustainable development school-wide. Higher education paints a similar picture. Here we see, for example, that students can develop sustainability in minors, but that in regular courses it is often searching for the integration of sustainability into the curriculum.
Growing ambition
Despite the lag of integral anchoring, research shows that educational institutions and teachers want to pay more attention to sustainable development than they currently do. A logical desire, thinks Van der Helm "Preparing students for the world of tomorrow touches the core mission of education. Amidst the current crises, discussing social issues and exploring solutions to them is important, also to give students the confidence to face the future. Moreover, education must stay connected to how society and the labor market are changing. Sustainable development is about future-proofing students, so it is not surprising that teachers want to work on this." He calls on schools and teachers to make full use of the space available within existing frameworks, and to incorporate sustainable development into the existing system as much as possible.
Meet the growing ambition! This is what you can do:
Distribute the State of Sustainable Education
- Share the State of Sustainable Education post on social media. You can use the social media kit.
- Hand over the report at your school. Would you like to receive a nicely formatted copy to do this? Let us know via this form know.
Are you an administrator or school leader?
- Sign up for the network in a personal capacity of Learning for Tomorrow for school leaders and administrators to stay informed, get inspired and learn with colleagues and become a member as a school of Cooperative Learning for Tomorrow.
- Get started with the SustainaBul VO, SustainaBul MBO or SustainaBul HO. The SustainaBul is a network of schools trying to achieve further sustainability in education through knowledge sharing and collaboration during several separate meetings for administrators, school leaders and sustainability coordinators. In addition, there is a cooperative ranking in which they encourage each other to take further steps. Read more and sign up.
- Check out the inspiration guide from the Continuing Education and the the MBO, in which good examples of other schools are shared from the SustainaBul.
- Watch the webinars on key developments in sustainability in education organized in November 2023 in collaboration with five cooperating ministries. There are four webinars: 1) Webinar 'The curriculum in relation to sustainability', 2) Webinar 'Pedagogy and didactics in relation to sustainability', 3) Webinar 'Citizenship and the Sustainable Development Goals' and 4) Webinar 'Making educational housing and operations more sustainable'
- Read it research by CINOP, which is about sustainability in mbo and/or the research 'Learning for Sustainable Development in Primary and Secondary Education', on the state of the art in primary and secondary education on sustainability.
- Use the Whole School Approach for Sustainable Development, a framework that supports schools to integrate sustainability issues structurally and coherently into the school organization.
- Join the Directors' meeting
- View the page for administrators and school leaders for more tools, events and inspiration.
Are you a teacher?
- Join one of our networks. You can per level of education, but you can also join a teacher community (for the primary- whether secondary education)
- Offer your students practical assignments around sustainability by organizing them yourself, or participating in one of the national challenges/hacketons in that area. For example, participate in the 17 world goals lesson or look for teaching materials at the sustainability theme page of wikiwijs and filter by your tier of education.
- Read the research on the state of the art in primary and secondary education on learning for sustainable development.
- Learn from other teachers and view podcasts and articles of the winners of the Sustainable Teacher Election.
