Category: Curriculum

A Curriculum for Climate Literacy

Post author By Sylvia Knight
Post date 21 May 2025

We know Why climate education is important, but What should we teach and How should we be teaching it?

The need for better climate education in schools across the UK is undeniable – from calls from young people, teachers and employers and evidence from climate literacy surveys.

As the Curriculum is being reviewed/ refreshed in England, Scotland and N Ireland and the new curriculum is being embedded in Wales, there is an ideal opportunity for curriculum designers to assess the opportunities for climate education within their curriculum and, critically, to ensure appropriate sequencing of knowledge, understanding, skills and values across subjects and levels.

The DfE in England’s Curriculum and Assessment review interim report specifically states that: “Rapid social, environmental and technological change necessitates that the curriculum keep pace; including a renewed focus on digital and media literacy, and a greater focus on sustainability and climate science.”

The Royal Meteorological Society believes that every student should leave school with the basic climate literacy that would enable them to engage with the messages put forward by the media or politicians or to make informed decisions about their own opportunities and responsibilities when it comes to climate change mitigation and adaptation, and also to equip them with the understanding and skills required to thrive in the green careers of the future.

For this to be possible, it is vital that they are able to critically apply their knowledge, understanding and skills to the contexts they encounter in their current and future lives.

In March 2025, we invited representatives from a broad range of subject and professional organisations to come together in a workshop kindly hosted by the University of Reading.

The aim of the workshop was to begin defining a Curriculum for Climate Literacy which, as part of a much wider curriculum, would equip students with the climate literacy needed for their lives as local and global citizens, and with the skills for careers shaped by a changing climate. By bringing together those with subject and subject-teaching expertise we hoped to develop a well sequenced, coherent, holistic and progressive curriculum.

Critically, what should all students know when they leave school, and what should some students, through their choice of subjects, know to equip them for specific further training/ study and careers?

Since the workshop, we have worked with many of these organisations to establish the Curriculum for Climate Literacy, which we hope those now developing national curricula, exam specifications and school level curricula will find useful.

The Core Principles of the Curriculum for Climate Literacy:

All students should leave school with the necessary climate literacy required to thrive as citizens of a world where the climate is changing, irrespective of their subject choices.
Climate literacy includes an understanding of climate science as well as the complex social and economic factors which relate to an understanding of the interaction between people and the climate system.
Climate change is a multi-disciplinary problem that requires a multi-disciplinary approach to both learning and solutions. Systems thinking is key, and the climate system (as well as the Earth’s natural, social and political systems) span school subject disciplines.
We have aimed to create a well sequenced, progressive curriculum where disciplinary or ‘substantive’ knowledge and understanding is developed progressively and is not repetitive or tokenistic.
We have supplied very detailed information – so that this can be implemented in any school curriculum, whatever its national framework. The detail is necessary to ensure equitable provision of high-quality climate education which is not dependent on teacher expertise or awareness.
We acknowledge the risk of curriculum overload and have endeavoured to suggest an appropriate amount of content in each subject. However, in some subjects, there does need to be a significant proportion of the curriculum dedicated to climate literacy.
The curriculum should have the flexibility to keep up to date with climate science, climate solutions (adaptation and mitigation) and the current state of the world, not least because this keeps it relevant to the skills for green careers options open to school leavers. A mechanism for regular review and update should be a part of the curriculum approach.
The curriculum should be flexible enough for teachers to be able to adapt it to local and current contexts.
Critical thinking should be embedded throughout the curriculum. It has relevance beyond climate literacy but is particularly relevant here.
Teacher support is critical to delivery of this curriculum. We recognise that significant teacher training and CPD will be required to allow confident delivery of high-quality climate education, as well as classroom resource provision.
A common language is critical for a curriculum for climate e.g. including consistent definitions at curriculum and setting level and across subjects. For example, when referring to climate actions and solutions in this document, we include mitigation, adaptation and, where appropriate, loss and damage payments, on a personal to global scale.
This is a Curriculum for Climate Literacy, not specifically for biodiversity or wider sustainability or environmental issues, whilst recognising that these topics are not entirely separable from climate literacy, because that is where our (RMetS) expertise lies.
This is a curriculum of hope, focussed as much as possible on actions and solutions as well as students’ futures, such as green careers, whilst still developing sound understanding of climate change and its far-reaching implications.
Subjects with a strong connection to a related career in climate change have these links explicitly developed within them, helping to meet Gatsby Benchmark 4: ‘Linking curriculum learning to careers.’
We have highlighted sequencing links to other subjects but assumed progression within the same subject (e.g. across the sciences).
Climate literacy supports global and local citizenship.
Climate literacy supports stewardship of the Earth and its resources.
This curriculum is focussed on knowledge and understanding. Skills & values constitute an equally vital part of a complete and coherent curriculum, as do the pedagogical/ how to teach aspects.

Access the full document for the detailed recommendations according to subject and level.

In compiling this Curriculum for Climate Literacy we have drawn on the work done by many organisations including, but not limited to, UNESCO’s Greening Education Partnership, TIDE, CAPE and SOS-UK.

Other core RMetS activities including quality controlling teaching and assessment resources, running an annual survey to assess the climate literacy of school leavers across the UK, and delivering teacher training.

Blog Climate Change Curriculum Geography

New Climate Change, Extreme Weather and Adaptation Resource Collection

Post author By Sylvia Knight
Post date 30 April 2025

We are delighted to publish a new collection of classroom resources, aimed at 14-16 (GCSE) geography teachers and students, exploring climate change, extreme weather, and adaptation to it.

Some of the resources in the collection were already available on MetLink, but most have been created for us by Rob Gamesby (Cool Geography) and are based on RMetS funded research, just completed, by Jiashu Zhu at Cambridge University. The research focusses on the causes, impacts and effectiveness of adaptation measures to river flooding in Sheffield, Extreme heat (heatwaves) in Cambridge and monsoon flooding in Pakistan.

Teachers at the Geographical Association conference 2025 playing adaptation Top Trumps, one of the resources in the new collection

Blog Curriculum maths Primary Teaching

Practice SATs Questions with climate context

Post author By Sylvia Knight
Post date 29 April 2025

RMetS have answered a call to make some KS2 SATs practice questions with weather and climate contexts.

These questions are taken directly from the last three years of SATs papers (specifically maths papers 2 and 3), with numbers changed to fit in with the updated context.

Context is wide ranging. Some questions refer to wildflowers, insects and grow-your-own vegetables to connect with young people’s love of nature and to empower them to act positively towards nature and our climate. Other more obvious connections include questions about the seasons, flooding, public transport and renewable energy.

Questions have been broken down into topic and are in PDF form, and available as Word documents (to make it easy to copy and paste) together with the answers for teachers (or students to self or peer mark).

Article Blog Curriculum Extreme weather Geography Teaching

Storm Bert Blog: A case study navigating the truth about flooding

Post author By Eleanor Pinches
Post date 26 February 2025

The RMetS education team have written a guest blog for Geography Southwest. Geography Southwest is a project to promote geographical education in the South West of England and beyond by creating and offering a wide range of resources to support the wider geographical community.

Storm Bert: A case study navigating the truth about flooding in a changing climate details the lifetime of Storm Bert, which caused significant damage back in November 2024. In particular, flood damage caused by the River Taff (in Wales) bursting its banks, really highlighted the need to continue but also improve our adaptation methods.

In the blog we also address some of the misconceptions of how our weather here in the UK and weather further afield is changing. It is crucial that we understand what trends have been identified in our climate system by climate scientists, in order to develop and establish effective adaptation methods.

Make sure you follow the link at the bottom of the page to get the FULL blog!

We also recently wrote a careers article for Geography Southwest, exploring the term ‘green careers’, ‘green skills’ and available resource for students with an interest in a career in weather and climate, particularly with a geography background.

Make sure to scroll down to the button of the page to get the full article!

Blog Climate Change Curriculum Teaching

The role of subjects and subject associations in climate change and sustainability education in England

Post author By Sylvia Knight
Post date 30 January 2025

This report published by UCL is the outcome of an event held on 16 July 2024 which brought us and other professional and subject associations together to discuss the roles that they, and the subjects they represent, play in climate change and sustainability education in schools.

Blog Climate Change Curriculum Primary Secondary Teaching

New Resources: Climate and Biodiversity Stripes

Post author By Sylvia Knight
Post date 2 December 2024

We’ve been delighted to work with Mastery Science to develop two new science teaching resources which are based on the climate and biodiversity stripes.

These visually striking images instantly convey information about changing global climate and biodiversity.

In the primary resource, students investigate the potential use of green walls to increase biodiversity on their school estate and adapt to climate change.

In the secondary resource, students prepare an (imaginary) submission for the Earthshot prize based on planting Kelp to mitigate climate change and increase biodiversity.

Blog Climate Change Curriculum Secondary Teaching

Climate Change in AQA GCSEs

Post author By Sylvia Knight
Post date 19 November 2024

This week, the AQA exam board has published booklets for teachers of their Science, Geography, Maths, Religious Studies, Citizenship. Design and Technology and Psychology GCSE specifications, showing how the current specifications can be used to deliver the climate education that students are asking for and need to equip them with the green skills for the future workforce.

Building on the reports we published in 2023, the booklets exemplify how teachers can demonstrate to students that the skills and understanding that they are already being taught can be applied to the context of climate change, adaptation and mitigation, without increasing curriculum content or teaching load.

In science in particular, in work led by Natalie Vlachakis and supported by the RMetS, teachers are given ideas for how, through considerations of sequencing, to link learning across physics, biology and chemistry in order to deliver a cohesive and holistic climate education.

Blog Curriculum

Curriculum Review

Post author By Sylvia Knight
Post date 16 October 2024

After discussions at various of our special interest groups and committees, the RMetS’ key points about a high quality climate curriculum are highlighted below. We encourage our members and partner organisations to echo these in their own responses to the ongoing curriculum review in England or in any of the four nations of the UK.

All students should leave school with some climate literacy irrespective of their subject and qualification choices

The RMetS climate literacy survey, 2022 demonstrates that a large proportion of school leavers in England don’t remember having been taught about climate change (46%) in their GCSE years. In addition, students are calling for quality climate education, and employers identify a green skills gap in the UK workforce. The World Bank Group’s Education for Climate Action report (2024) stresses the importance of education as an instrument for increasing climate mitigation and adaptation.
UNESCO’s Greening Curriculum Guidance (2024) concludes “The world faces interconnected challenges, with the climate crisis looming as an existential threat. Addressing these challenges requires an education system that not only acknowledges these realities but actively prepares individuals to navigate them and innovate for a more sustainable future.”

Students should leave school with the ability to apply their knowledge, understanding and skills to the real world as it changes and develops as well as their personal situations and careers. Specifically, high quality climate education should allow students to develop climate literacy and green skills which students can apply to green careers and broader climate action in their personal and professional lives.

The curriculum should be flexible enough to adapt as understanding, technology, relevance and situation changes. Specifically, this relates to the state of the climate, climate impacts around the world and current issues relating to climate justice, politics, economics and communication as well as technological solutions to the climate crisis.

Climate education should make students concerned about climate change but hopeful, focussing on solutions and careers as laid out in the DfE Sustainability and Climate Change Education Strategy (2022), UNESCO’s Greening Curriculum Guidance (2024)

Students should be able to synthesise their learning in different topics and subjects. Specifically, students should be able to apply their learning in geography and the sciences to climate change and sustainability contexts and examples in all subjects, and apply their maths, data and statistical skills to climate contexts in all subjects.

Climate change is a multi-disciplinary problem, impacting on all lives and careers, that requires a multidiscipline approach to both solutions and learning. It should therefore not just be taught in self-contained units (or even a separate subject) but should be integrated, where appropriate, throughout the curriculum in all subjects, by making links between learning in different subjects to develop a climate education which is holistic, strengthens and progresses, broadens learning and is not repetitive. Geography, Physics, Chemistry and Biology are the subjects where core understanding can be developed, which can be the expected knowledge on which application of that knowledge in all other subjects can be based, where appropriate. Maths, data and statistical skills underpin high quality climate education.

Climate education in the curriculum report and Easy Wins for Climate change education in England

Teacher support and subject specific professional development is critical to develop both subject knowledge and subject pedagogy amongst the current and future teaching community. All teachers should be able to access training to improve their climate literacy as well as their understanding of how to appropriately deliver climate education in their teaching.

Many teachers don’t currently have the confidence to deliver climate education UCL survey of teachers in England
The RMetS quality control work with resource providers, publishers and exam boards has revealed widespread misconceptions and out of date materials in use.

Blog Climate Change Curriculum maths Schools Secondary Teaching

Climate Calculations Challenge

Post author By Eleanor Pinches
Post date 21 August 2024

Maths is at the centre of all things science, and climate change is no different. To understand climate change, scientists have measured many climatic and weather variables such as temperature, rainfall accumulations, pressure and atmospheric CO₂ concentrations. Mathematical skills allow us to explore these observations, finding trends and looking at the statistics. Maths allows us to create equations that allow us to work out what will happen in the future, be it the weather for the weekend or predicting the future climate in 50 years. Maths also helps us to unpick the social science of climate change.

Solving climate change needs brainy mathematicians!

Challenge:

As part of Maths Week Scotland we are challenging secondary students in Scotland to explore the broad topic of climate change and the many possible links it has to mathematics by writing their own maths problems and questions.

This challenge will be split into two sections: writing questions and peer reviewing questions from another group/class.

Part 1: Writing questions

The Royal Meteorological Society (RMetS) has recently released the Climate Change Concept Association Tool which brings together more than three hundred climate change concepts in an engaging illustration of how they are linked.

Climate change is linked to 3 main terms – causes, policy and impacts. We are going to focus on causes and impacts.

We suggest splitting the two topics into 2 days; writing questions for causes on Monday 23rd September and impacts on Tuesday 24th September. However, the competition will be live before Scottish Maths Week so you can deliver the question making sessions when it best suits your teaching pattern.

The questions must be linked to each of the topics associated with the ‘causes’ and ‘impacts’ of climate change. The questions should be set at National 4/ 5 level in terms of mathematical skills and style.

Click below to see an example question if the topic set was ‘climate action’.

There are 8 topics associated with CAUSES (Monday):

Climate justice
Science
Feedback loops
Greenhouse gas emissions
Land use change
Natural variability
Liability
Anthropogenic

There are 24 further topics associated IMPACTS (Tuesday).

However, we are going to focus on the 10 terms in bold for the questions:

Arctic/Antarctic
Anthropocene
Adaptation
Behavioural change
Climate zone shift
Climate justice (already done on Monday)
Communication
Ecosystems
Evidence
Extreme weather
Feedback loops (already done on Monday)
Global atmospheric circulation
Health
Hindcasts/projections
Individuals
Infrastructure
Impact assessment
Land use change (already done on Monday)
Migration(people)
Oceans
Permafrost
Regional climate change
Resource loss
Society
Social science
Soil heath
Small island developing states (SIDs)

We advise breaking the class into small groups (of no more than 3) and tasking each group with a couple of topics each. You will need to keep track of who worked on which questions, as there are prizes on offer – however, please don’t tell us the students’ names. For the terms that need more explanation, there is also a glossary on our website.

You can also contact education@rmets.org at any point up to and during the week – just include ‘Maths Week Scotland’ in the subject heading.

Some topics may be more challenging than others, for example creating a maths question around liability. You can use the Climate Change Concept Association Tool for this. Click on liability and it will give you further linked topics. Looking at the glossary term will give you some hints and tips to what the context for the climate could be. Encourage your students to do research into the topics, allowing them to explore and come up with creative questions (some resources: Climate websites). Please note that if the questions involve data, graphs or specific values the references should be included. Questions written should be original. Originality will be checked as part of the reviewing process.

All final questions must be written into the submission document (which can be accessed on the competition hub) and then this emailed to education@rmets.org by 11pm on Tuesday 24th September.

Please make use of the equation editor on PowerPoint if needed, or there are many online equation editors if you would prefer. Please make sure a teacher submits the questions on behalf of the class or a legal guardian if the competition is entered by a student who is home schooled. Entries must be made from Scottish Schools or students who are home schooled from an address in Scotland.

Part 2: Peer reviewing

You will then be given the opportunity to contribute to the reviewing process for the competition. You will score the questions written by another team/school against a number of criteria provided in the score card (which can be accessed on the competition hub). This peer reviewing process will be kept anonymous. Your peer review scores will then be combined with the expert review, undertaken by the RMetS education team and supported by Dr Frost Learning. The expert review will also include the plagiarism checks.

You will receive an email from education@rmets.org by the morning of Thursday 26th September with your assigned questions for reviewing. You will then have until Friday 4th October to complete the reviewing process. We suggest that either the whole class does all the questions and scores each question together, or similarly to the creating process, you split the class into smaller groups to focus on just a few of the questions.

The scores must then be filled in on the score card. Again, please make sure that the form is sent by a teacher or adult on behalf of the group or entrant. Return to education@rmets.org by 11pm Friday 4th October.

Prizes:

18 prizes are on offer – a £5 Amazon voucher per student for the best question written in each topic (up to £15 per group). We will contact you, the teacher/guardian, if one of your questions has won. It is then your responsibility to pass the prize on to the correct group of students who wrote the winning question.

In addition to this, each school/class which submits an entry for all 18 linked questions will be awarded with a certificate.

Future use of questions:

RMetS will add the winning questions from each topic and any other suitable questions to the bank of resources that exist on our education platform, MetLink (similar to the question provided as an example earlier in this document). The questions will be uploaded anonymously to the website, referencing that the questions were created through the Climate Calculations Challenge in collaboration Dr Frost Learning, and supported by Maths Week Scotland.

All documents for the Climate Calculations Challenge, including presentations slides and entry forms, can be found on the challenges page of the Maths Week Scotland website.

Blog Climate Change Curriculum Schools Teaching

Climate and Sustainability in the Curriculum – New Report

Post author By Sylvia Knight
Post date 8 July 2024

Children looking at bark through magnifying glasses

As the new UK government begins its stated mission to ‘rebuild Britain’, a group of education and climate experts is calling for sustainability and climate education to be at the heart of its priorities.

In its election manifesto, the Labour party committed to making Britain a clean energy superpower and to a new, modern educational curriculum.

Launched at the Royal Meteorological Society Annual Weather and Climate Conference today (Monday 8 July) in Reading, the National Climate Education Action Plan Curriculum Mapping report shows how these two missions could be linked. The report highlights the many opportunities to bring quality climate and sustainability education into the curriculum.

Professor Andrew Charlton-Perez, of the University of Reading will launch the report today together with Professor Liz Bentley, chief executive of the Royal Meteorological Society.

Professor Charlton-Perez said: “Including climate and sustainability within the curriculum review will be vital to ensuring that the new government delivers long-lasting reform that can prepare young people for the good green jobs of the future.”

Rich curriculum

The report highlights different options to improve climate education from the first week of the new government, and the pros and cons of each of these approaches.

There are opportunities for an expansion of current climate education by adjusting teaching within the current curriculum, or by making small but meaningful changes to current curriculum specifications.

It includes detailed mapping showing where and how climate can fit into the curriculum. These changes could be implemented quickly while a more comprehensive review takes place. The report also highlights how greater inclusion of climate education fits with the desire of the new government to make the curriculum rich, broad and inclusive.

In the foreword to the report, Lisa Hoerning, a recent school leaver, makes clear the desire amongst young people for the forthcoming curriculum review to incorporate climate and sustainability education as a theme that crosses subjects and educational levels.

She said: “The current curriculum studied by young people across England doesn’t educate us on the climate and ecological emergency, and, depending on your subject preferences, you can nearly skip the relevant content entirely.”

She also expressed her hope that that in the near future climate education, as demonstrated in the report, would be integrated across all subjects.

Professor Sylvia Knight, Head of Education at RMetS, said, “Bringing together this report revealed the depth and diversity of work by organisations across the country, looking at ways to improve the climate literacy and green skills of our school leavers. Whilst recognising that curriculum reform could lead to the highest quality climate education, many opportunities already exist within the current curriculum or something very like it for teachers to deliver engaging, relevant, subject- and level-appropriate climate and sustainability teaching. The key to realising these opportunities will be teacher support, incentive and assessment.”

The report was produced by a group of authors from fourteen educational organisations led by Professor Sylvia Knight, of the Royal Meteorological Society, and science education expert Sean McQuaid of the TIDE community and is endorsed by a broad coalition of 60 organisations from schools, colleges, universities, climate charities and educational publishers.

The full National Climate Education Action Plan Curriculum Mapping report is published online today.

We know Why climate education is important, but What should we teach and How should we be teaching it?

The Core Principles of the Curriculum for Climate Literacy:

Rich curriculum

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