Climate Education: What Do The Stats Say?

Joe Brindle, a volunteer for the non-profit Teach The Future has a lot to say when it comes to the lack of climate education in schools. We've published a blog he wrote for Teach the Future, to share some key statistics we should all be aware of.

I had a little realisation earlier, that we at Teach the Future probably haven't done the best job of sharing all the really important Climate Education surveys that we have collected over the last year. To fix that problem, I've written this blog - I intend to keep updating it as we discover more research!

Sustainability Skills Survey - 2017-18 (SOS-UK, 12,000 students in October 2017, builds on the data gathered through six years of previous research):

- Approximately 80% of students want their institution to be doing more on sustainable development;

- Around 60% of students want to learn more about sustainability.

Schools and sustainability Survey 2018 (SOS-UK, 2018, 2990 pupils across England in year 5 and 6 in primary school and across all years in secondary and sixth form):

- 68% are interested in learning more about the environment;

- 85% agree that all schools and colleges should be encouraging and helping pupils like me to do things to help the environment;

- Just 4% of pupils surveyed feel that they know a lot about climate change;

- 42% of young people aged 9-18 say they have learnt a little, hardly anything or nothing about the environment at school.

UKSCN / Oxfam teachers survey (350 responses, primary and secondary, UK wide, May 2019):

- 75% of teachers feel they haven’t received adequate training to educate students about climate change;

- 69% of teachers think there should be more teaching about climate change in UK schools.

YouGov poll (2,579 adults, January 2020):

- 71% said learning about climate change should be part of the school curriculum.

Erasmus+ School Education Gateway Survey (36 European countries, 1101 responses):

- 70% agreed that the curriculum does not sufficiently address climate education.

Zurich Insurance ahead of its first Youth Against Carbon Survey (Censuswide, 23 – 24 March 2020, questioning 2012 people aged 7-17 in the UK)

- Nearly a quarter (24%) of those surveyed polled don’t believe young voices are being listened to on climate change

- One-third (32%) of those surveyed want climate change and sustainability topics to be covered at school.