Education for Sustainability in New Zealand Schools

Education for Sustainability policies and practices

The New Zealand Curriculum provides a context for developing teaching and learning programmes for environmental education. Schools will also have a range of policies and practices through which the aims of Education for Sustainability can be met. Such policies and practices can be used to establish appropriate organisational, operational, and curriculum objectives that promote a whole-school approach to a sustainable environment. Such an approach ensures that the aims of Education for Sustainability are addressed in a coherent and consistent manner and that students do not receive conflicting messages.

Schools that adopt a coherent framework for integrating their environmental policies, programmes, and practices are often known as enviro-schools. Such schools usually have an environmental committee comprising the principal, a board of trustees member, teachers, students, and the school caretaker or groundsperson. The role of the committee is to develop a policy statement for inclusion in the school charter (after consulting with the school community, local government, and iwi). The committee also monitors the implementation and effects of the school's environmental policies and provides a point of contact for local environmental groups.

In enviro-schools:

Education for Sustainability policies are included in the school charter;
Education for Sustainability programmes are taught at all levels;
waste-minimisation programmes, such as recycling, composting, and worm farms are implemented;
energy- and water-saving strategies, such as signs on light switches and computers reminding people to turn them off, are used;
planting, revegetation, or habitat-enhancement programmes are practiced;
there are regular environmental audits of sustainable practices relating to waste reduction and recycling, purchasing, management of toxic materials, energy conservation, water conservation, and transport;
there is school-wide recognition of special events such as Arbor Day, World Environment Day, and Conservation Week;
students participate in community activities, such as cleaning up beaches or preserving historical sites;
a student environmental group is supported;
environmentally friendly products are used throughout the school.

Education for Sustainability and The New Zealand Curriculum Framework

The New Zealand Curriculum Framework sets out the official policy for teaching, learning, and assessment in New Zealand schools. The New Zealand Curriculum provides a framework that links learning experiences within the total school curriculum in a coherent and balanced way. This framework and the national curriculum statements that accompany it provide a range of opportunities to meet the aims of environmental education.

The New Zealand Curriculum Framework has the following components:

principles
essential learning areas
essential skills

Principles

The principles give direction to the curriculum in New Zealand schools. All schools are required to ensure that the principles are embodied in their teaching and learning programmes.

Essential learning areas

These describe broad categories of knowledge and understanding. They provide the context within which the essential skills, attitudes, and values are developed. The essential learning areas are:

language and languages
mathematics
science, including biology, chemistry, and physics
technology
social sciences, including social studies, history, geography, and economics
the arts
health and physical well-being

Examples of how Education for Sustainability can be undertaken within each of the essential learning areas are outlined in the section on Enviromental Education and the New Zealand Curriculum Statements. While these learning areas each have an individual identity, they are also interrelated. In planning Education for Sustainability programmes, schools and teachers need to understand and make use of the connections between the learning areas.

Essential skills

All students are required to develop the essential skills across the whole curriculum throughout the years of schooling. The skills are:

communication skills
numeracy skills
information skills
problem-solving skills
self-management and competitive skills
social and co-operative skills
physical skills
work and study skills

The essential skills cannot be learned in isolation but need to be developed through the essential learning areas and in different contexts across the curriculum. Education for Sustainability is one context in which the essential skills can be developed. Examples of how this might be done can be found in Cross-curricular Themes.

Attitudes and values

The school curriculum, through its practices and procedures, will reinforce the commonly held values of individual and collective responsibility which underpin New Zealand's democratic society. These values include honesty, reliability, respect for others, respect for the law, tolerance (rangimārie), fairness, caring or compassion (aroha), non-sexism, and non-racism.

The New Zealand Curriculum Framework, page 21

The framework requires students to examine the context and implications of their own values, the values of others, and the values on which our social structures are based. Education for Sustainability provides a relevant context for identifying, exploring, and developing values and attitudes that can ensure students' active participation in maintaining and improving the quality of the local, national, and global environment.

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