WHAT ARE THE SDGS?

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015, provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future. At its heart are the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are an urgent call for action by all countries - developed and developing - in a global partnership. They recognize that ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand-in-hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth – all while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests. 

WEBINAR - An Ethical Curriculum for Tomorrows Generation

In this webinar, Kerry Rochester and Emily Calvert (Rivers CofE Multi Academy Trust) will discuss how the curriculum delivered in several schools across the MAT needed to be reviewed. As a result, a group of strategic leaders convened to form a curriculum working party. This began a journey that resulted in the creation of a curriculum that teaches children to feel empowered to make a difference for our planet and each other, as well as to ‘Love, Learn, and Live as a Global Citizen in an Ever-Changing World.’  

This curriculum needed to inspire children to be game changers while also ensuring that lessons from the past are learned in order to avoid repeating the same mistakes. We must prioritise global warming and the health of our planet! The next ten years will be crucial for our planet and the people who live on it. As a team, we questioned why we had not been able to teach this effectively in the past. If we had had a greater impact, perhaps the world would not be facing the recent traumas seen in the news and witnessed first-hand by so many people around the world.  

The concepts of sustainability and global warming are not new. In fact, some of us recall teaching these concepts as part of the national curriculum for many years. However, we felt that we had ‘dabbled’ in it in the past without fully comprehending its significance. As a result, we decided to base our newly designed curriculum on the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which the UN hopes to achieve by 2030. These objectives were not to be viewed as an afterthought, but as a driving force. We have spent the last year putting together a comprehensive and exciting framework. Through our key drivers of sustainability, equality, innovation, legacy, partnership, and knowledge, this framework focuses on embedding these 17 goals within the curriculum.  Each foundation subject remains discreet to ensure that our pupils receive a well-balanced, broad, sequential, and well-constructed curriculum. Along with disciplinary knowledge, each subject has its own substantive knowledge and concepts. All nine foundation subjects have been woven with each of our key drivers and the 17 goals. This has ensured that pupils will gain a better understanding of how we can all work together to help heal and protect our planet. We firmly believe that we are providing our pupils with the knowledge and power they require to change the world!  

We must all hold ourselves accountable for the impact we have on our planet and environment.  As educators we have the responsibility to all our pupils, to ensure we start to change the way we behave in regard to how we treat the planet.  

We would like to share our journey with you in order to inspire more schools and teachers to incorporate sustainability into their curriculum – not as an afterthought, but as a driving force!  We can make a difference if we work together.

• Webinar - An Ethical Curriculum for Tomorrow's Generation

Reception Children looking after our environment, collecting litter.

Reception superstar L worked to make a globe at home with his family to share with his classmates, showing plastics in our oceans.