VIEWS & OPINION
Empowering young people to become lifelong planet protectors
Comment by JO ROYLE, Managing Director, Common Seas
We are living through a plastic pollution crisis. Our world creates 220 million tons of plastic waste every year, of which 40% pollutes our environment and just 15% is recycled. Within 20 years, the amount of plastic entering the ocean is on track to triple. That means, without urgent action, there’ll be 50kg of plastic in the ocean for every metre of shoreline. This is a disaster for our ocean, with far-reaching consequences for our health, livelihoods, economies and climate. This is now a multi-generational issue. Because we are passing this
problem on to our children, we have a responsibility to equip them with the knowledge and courage to solve it. Fortunately, young people show time and again they are up to the
task. Take Greta Thunberg: without a vote, without a platform, the Youth Climate Strike changed the narrative around climate change action within one year. As we strive to address ocean plastic, how can we also unlock young people’s potential?
To solve a problem, you must first understand it Ocean Plastics Academy is a movement to mainstream plastics education and help schools become hubs for innovative, practical solutions to end plastic waste. By educating and empowering children to solve this problem at their school, we can better prepare them to solve it in society.
The Academy comprises two parts. The first is a suite of completely
free teaching resources that can help educators equip young people with the skills and understanding to address plastic pollution. The resources were developed in collaboration with a broad coalition of educators, scientists and industry experts. They were carefully designed to align with the UK curriculum, and frameworks developed by UNESCO and those working for Ocean Literacy, to support global adaptation. 12 ‘Ocean for Beginners’ lessons introduce students to the wonder of
the ocean, setting the scene for learning about marine plastic pollution. 32 ‘Ocean Plastics’ lessons take a deeper dive. Through a range of real- world activities and experiences, including investigations, field work and campaigns, students explore their own connection to the ocean and the role they can play in addressing the crisis. In response to lockdown, the team behind Ocean Plastics Academy
also developed 14 home-schooling activities. From making plastic slime to upcycling projects, young people investigate the scientific properties that make plastic so useful, explore why it presents such a problem and work with their families to take on plastic pollution at home.
Turning literacy into action Of course, learning about plastic is only one piece of the puzzle, which is where the second part of the Academy comes in – a toolkit to guide teachers and young people through steps to measure and radically reduce single-use plastics in their school. The toolkit promotes a student-centric approach to identifying,
devising and implementing plastic waste interventions. By empowering young people to apply what they’ve learned in the real world, the Academy hones leadership skills and fosters a sense of agency. Because helping young people realise what they’re capable of is so important when it comes to building the generation of leaders, activists, citizens and voters needed to solve the plastic pollution crisis.
To find out more about Ocean Plastics Academy and download the free resources, head to
www.commonseas.com/oceanplasticsacademy
‘We need to be both ambitious and realistic about the enabling power of technology in
education’ Comment by TONY MCALEAVY, Research Director, Education Development Trust
At Education Development Trust, our mission is to transform lives by improving education. We develop evidence-informed solutions to bring about real change, raise educational standards, and support global efforts to address learning crises and reduce inequalities of opportunity. Finding and implementing solutions for education during the pandemic has been no different. The COVID-19 crisis has forced school closures worldwide, disrupting
the education of more than 1.7 billion children and young people. Much of the current debate has focused on how much students have learnt or ‘lost’ during school closures and re-opening schools has taken various forms across the world. But the context in low income countries makes this a more challenging prospect, with the result that the majority of reopening has taken place in middle to high income countries. No matter where you are in the world, policymakers are faced with the apparently impossible dilemma: keeping schools closed may create even greater learning loss, while reopening them may be highly dangerous in some
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www.education-today.co.uk
circumstances. Education Development Trust has recently published a new report Learning Renewed: a safe way to reopen schools in the Global South which puts forward a flexible model, embeds community learning and makes use of available, appropriate technology. Whilst the circumstances that the proposed model is based on are
different to the UK, there are interesting parallels and ideas, particularly in tackling differing access to technology – a disparity which became apparent over lockdown. How we use technology is important and particularly, that assumptions
about the power of technology are realistic. If home learning, whether during another lockdown, blended learning or for students not yet back at school, relies heavily on technology, we automatically exclude the most underprivileged from learning. Educators need to make imaginative use of technology, something that Education Development Trust’s London Connected Learning Centre works with schools in the UK to do. However, just like in low income countries, we also need to implement a ‘no-tech safety net’, ensuring that hard-copy learning resources are available to those who cannot access digital materials. We refer to this as a ‘low threshold/ high ceiling’ approach which recognises the exciting potential of technology where it exists (the high ceilings) but assumes the worst levels of access (the low threshold) when planning to best ensure universal engagement. There are steps that educators and policy makers all over the world can
take now to ensure that their pupils are not disadvantaged should another lockdown occur or there is move to blended learning. One such step which is advocated in the report is a tech audit for every student to ascertain whether there are tech-enabled enrichment opportunities. Adopting a flexible approach to technology is an important step in
making education fairer for all. In low income countries, there is an opportunity to mitigate some of the challenges that have been facing educators for many years by implementing a new model of learning – and in the UK, there are lessons that can be learned from this model which can help education to thrive in the face of a second wave.
October 2020
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