Sustainable Development Education
TEXT OF A LETTER FROM THE RT HON MICHAEL MEACHER MP, MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND STEPHEN TWIGG MP, PARLIAMENTARY UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR SCHOOLS TO SIR GEOFFREY HOLLAND, CHAIRMAN, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT EDUCATION PANEL
25 February 2003
FUTURE OF EDUCATION FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND REVIEW OF THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT EDUCATION PANEL
As you know, our two Departments have been reviewing the future of the Sustainable Development Education Panel. We write now to let you know formally the results of that review, and of our longer-term plans for a strategic approach to education for sustainable development.
Last year we agreed that your Panel should draft a strategy for education for sustainable development in England for us. This draft strategy has proved to be a major factor for both the review team and for us in considering its report.
The draft strategy contains many useful and practical suggestions, linked to a clear strategic vision. We must now move on from your vision towards a strategy for implementation.
This takes us into a new phase of work. The first step is for us, together with colleagues in other relevant departments, to consider it further with a view to putting a draft out for consultation in the summer.
We want to involve stakeholders from outside Government in this and would like a flexible way of enlisting help from some of the key deliverers of education for sustainable development across all the sectors that you have identified. The nature of the task, with the focus on implementation, calls for a different kind of structure from the 'advisory NDPB' model which we followed with SDEP.
We therefore intend to set up a Sustainable Development Education Sounding Board, which we will ask to work with the Government in drawing up a Strategy for Sustainable Development Education in England (based on your draft); developing the means to implement that strategy; and advising on the consultation process for it. We intend that the Sounding Board will start work in April, alongside a cross-Whitehall group of officials. Members would attend meetings where the topics under discussion would benefit from their expertise and experience, so each member might well not attend every meeting. We envisage the Sounding Board continuing until at least our decisions on the publication of a government strategy.
We expect to involve organisations representing schools, further and higher education; the Learning and Skills Council; employers, trade unions (including teaching unions), professional institutes and Sector Skills Councils; local government, regeneration and environmental organisations; the media, faith communities, youth work, and other informal learning bodies such as museums; together with representatives of young people, women, ethnic minorities, people with disabilities and the voluntary sector.
Given these positive new developments, we do not believe that the current Panel needs to continue beyond its present period of appointment which ends on 1 March 2003. In no way does this detract from the achievements of the Panel, whose work, from your pioneering and widely admired scoping report in 1999 to your draft strategy in 2003, has made possible this new phase. We warmly invite you to suggest suitable organisations and individuals, including yourselves, to our officials so that we can consider them for the Sounding Board. We hope to have the membership agreed by the end of March.
We write in the form of an open letter, which you may wish to send out with copies of your Fifth Report to clarify to its readers what we have in mind. We will place this letter and the Review Report, a copy of which we enclose, on the Government website pages devoted to the Panel.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank you and members of the Panel for all your hard and productive work over the past five years.
MICHAEL MEACHER
STEPHEN TWIGG
Page last modified 27 October 2003