VIEWS & OPINION


Tolerance underpins climate justice and is key to tackling climate


change Comment by FELICIA JACKSON, Chair of the Learn2Think Foundation


There has been increasing debate about cancel culture, the idea that right-wing individuals are being unfairly sanctioned for expressing opinions. This has meant growing pushback against the word ‘tolerance’ as if it infers that we should put up with negative ideas and approaches. At the Learn2Think Foundation we think the opposite – that tolerance is about providing the same rights to others that you demand for yourself, about standing up to injustice. We’ve seen intolerance play out in the advent of protectionism around


vaccines for COVID-19. Wealthy nations are paying to get primary access to vaccines, hoarding millions of vials while poorer countries still wait. But this is not a situation where borders can be protected. Unless everyone is vaccinated, those pools of infection are likely to provide a home for virus mutation and reinfection. The science suggests that current vaccines provide protection for a limited amount of time – that means we need it regularly, and we need to minimise mutations to ensure global protection. By approaching the problem as a global one, and sharing the resources we have, we find a better overall solution. It is this notion of looking at everyone’s rights as the same, and seeing


how things work as a global system that lies at the heart of tackling climate change. We’re not talking a debate about climate science, which


has at last gained mainstream acceptance. The challenge we face is how we go about mitigating and adapting to climate change in a world with finite resources, a growing global population and a growing wave of nationalism around the world. Whether it’s managing water and pollution, energy and consumption,


biodiversity and waste, every action has an impact. Those impacts become cumulative and they don’t stop at borders. Every change to the water cycle eventually affects everyone. That’s why this year the Learn2Think Foundation is making climate change, and climate justice, the theme for Tolerance Day. The problem of intolerance- thinking about people as ‘them’ and ‘us’-


lies at the heart of sustainability and work to address climate change. Free markets are about efficient allocation of resources, but they don’t currently include the cost of actions that damage the environment or society and people. We need to use markets to drive innovations so that our societies become regenerative rather than destructive. The first step is ensuring that every child is aware of how the changing


climate changes everything. Let’s challenge them to think about whole systems and how their parts relate over time and in the context of the wider world. In January we talked about the Earth Day Network’s campaign for


climate literacy and we’re supporting the Network this year in promoting Earth Day on 22nd April. Climate change can be explored through topics from maths, geography, history, art, science, English and more. We’ll be putting together some specific lesson plans that we hope that you’ll find useful for that, and later this year we’ll be providing free support in teaching children how to think about the climate in different ways, how to find their voices and help make the world a better, fairer place. As ever, we hope you find them useful. You’ll be able to download them for free at www.toleranceday.org


Youngest children bear the brunt of the pandemic


Comment by GRAHAM COOPER, chief marketing officer at Juniper Education


With prolonged spells of time away from the classroom and months of disruption to formal education it’s no surprise that the pandemic has had an impact on children’s learning. An important new study confirms that despite the superhuman efforts


of school leaders, teachers and families to keep children learning over the past troubled year, many pupils are not performing as they should be for their age. The Juniper National Dataset Report examines teacher assessment data


from 6,000 primary schools representing nearly 1.5 million pupils. The data shows a steep fall in pupils who reached age related expectations in reading, writing and maths in summer 2020 compared with pre- pandemic levels. Figures reveal that the youngest children’s performance has been


hardest hit.


Lockdown learning losses Before the pandemic, 82% of Year 1 pupils achieved age related expectations in reading, 79% in writing and 83% in maths, according to the report. But by the summer term of 2020 these figures had dropped to 60%, 54% and 59%. Headteacher of Mundella Primary School in Kent, Frazer Westmorland,


explores the reasons for these learning dips. “Younger pupils have certainly been the most affected from their time away from the classroom,” says Frazer. “A lot of skills such as how do I learn, listen and collaborate are


developed at school. They provide the building blocks which allow for progress in learning.”


24 www.education-today.co.uk


Deeper inequalities There are worrying implications for the attainment gap too, as the data shows children who qualify for Pupil Premium fared worse than their non- disadvantaged peers. Disadvantaged Year 1 pupils’ attainment in maths had dropped by


more than 30 percentage points by summer 2020, almost 10 percentage points more than the fall recorded for non-disadvantaged children. There were similar gaps for reading and writing – further evidence that the pandemic is deepening the educational divide. The report also explores assessment data for September to December


2020 when most pupils went back to school full time, uncovering stark inequalities in children’s journey on the road to recovery. Key Stage 1 children are likely to recoup their learning more slowly than


those in Key Stage 2. Disadvantaged children and pupils with special educational needs will take longer to recover than their peers.


Message of hope The good news is that Year 6 children were able to close many of the gaps in their learning. An encouraging 74% of Year 6 pupils achieved age related expectations in reading by the 2020 Christmas break, 67% in writing and 71% in maths. These are just a few percentage points behind pre-pandemic levels in 2019 of 78%, 72% and 77% respectively. Although Year 6 felt the impact of the pandemic, this year group may


have adapted more readily to home learning than younger children, making them better prepared to weather the storm of the crisis. In the months ahead, each school will need to understand where the


greatest learning losses are so they can direct resources into supporting those children who need it most. Comparisons with other schools can provide valuable context in developing an effective recovery plan. To help with this, any school can use Juniper Education’s analysis tool to compare its own assessment results against a benchmark of 6,000 schools around the country. Equipped with the right information about where to target resources


when children are back with their teachers, schools can help pupils make up for lost time and leave behind the damage caused by Covid-19. To see the full report, please visit: https://junipereducation.org/national-


dataset-report/ March 2021


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