Credit: Pahis via Adobe Stock.

16 September 2025

By Jaren Yeung, Citizenship PGCE

Reflections from a Citizenship student teacher

‘We must do something about the environment because we all live in this world!’ has been echoing along school halls ad nauseam since even my time as a student. At this point, sustainability is something we all know about, but few actually care. The UK Department for Education aims to become a leader in sustainability and climate education, and it has made a commitment for both teachers and students across multiple disciplines in the primary, secondary and tertiary level to bolster educational opportunities for sustainability. Yes, we have positioned our educational institutions as one of the chief interlocutors in climate justice but only symbolically. Over 80 thousand tonnes of food waste are produced by the education sector annually. Roughly 20% of a school’s energy is wasted, with the percentage rising to 30% on holidays and weekends. Paper, water and plastics are also wasted, producing more annual waste than a household does throughout its entire lifetime. How can we expect our students to care about sustainability if the institution teaching them to be sustainable is not?

Yet in the classroom, we are told the four Rs: reduce, reuse, recycle and repair. And while doing your part helps, a realisation creeps in: that your contribution to the cause, if not practiced by most, will not stop the threat of climate change and global warming, so why bother? If individual action does so little, it is much easier to be defeatist about the whole planet dying fiasco. In reality much of the onus is really on the government, corporations, and institutional leaders on top of our market hierarchy to follow those four Rs. They have the highest ability to change things around but ironically profit the most from climate change while being the least affected by its consequences. A double injustice we call that. And so, as citizens, as teachers and as students, we actually have a lot that we can do.

Citizenship is the subject of people and our relationship with each other in society. Officially becoming a part of the national curriculum in 2002, Citizenship began with the UK government recognising that its brand of democracy is fragile, dependent on a well-educated population with strong values for the betterment of their community (difficult thing to come by nowadays). Hence, the subject was the government’s solution to safeguarding a healthy community underpinned by shared values. At its core, it is the subject of social cohesion and development. Admittedly I hadn’t heard much about Citizenship before applying for the PGCE. My education career has been international from the start, so I was cautious with how the UK’s form of citizenship education reconciles itself within the context of its country—colonial past, liberalism, difficulties with multiculturalism and all. Turns out there is room for a global citizenship, especially evident for global issues such as climate change, and the academic and public discourses for citizenship education reflect that. Citizenship is key to equipping young people with the proactive attitude and the legal, political and media literacy to tackle the climate crisis through informed action.

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Credit: Hurca!, generated with AI / Adobe.

2 January 2024

By Batool Wajiha Zaidi, Arts and Sciences BASc.

Climate change is one of the most significant global challenges that humanity has ever had to face. Such a complex challenge requires a collective effort across all sectors of society to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change and protect the future of our planet. In particular, universities are uniquely situated to respond to the climate crisis through education and academic research. 

Students are profoundly affected by university policies and have raised concerns as to the current education system’s ability to prepare them for the uncertainty of the future. Yet, their voice and impact is almost non-existent in climate change and sustainability education policy. Students have an insider perspective and are motivated to challenge the existing practices of an institution, as such; with proper engagement, they can make meaningful recommendations for sustainable futures in higher education. 

In order to address the lack of engagement of students in policymaking for sustainability in higher education, we conducted a research project co-led by two undergraduate students to better understand students’ perceptions of climate change and sustainability education in universities and produce a collaborative policy brief.
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