Education for sustainable development (ESD) is all about developing learners’ knowledge, skills, behaviours and agency so they can contribute positively to sustainability through their lives, whether personally or through their jobs.
Data published in spring 2021 showed that less than 1 in 200 learners in the Further Education and Training sector are studying on a course with explicit ESD content, therefore providers are increasingly looking at how to complement their existing qualifications with something that enhances their ESD provision.
There are countless ways that sustainability can be taught in the Further Education and Training sector. The ETF advocates whole institution approaches, ensuring that all learners become sustainability learners. We also work with others across the sector to create a more enabling environment in which FE and Training sector providers, leaders and practitioners can deliver high quality, impactful ESD.
ESD by subject area
Research shows that ESD is delivered best when it’s clear how sustainability relates to the core subject area, embedded and contextualised within a subject rather than delivered as a separate, standalone topic (for more on that, see our Subject Specialism Guide). However, we recognise that there is a demand to develop sustainability expertise, and whole-system change takes time.
Therefore, many FE and Training sector providers are adding explicit sustainability qualifications to their portfolio – to complement other courses to ensure learners have access to quality ESD. Alongside this, many awarding organisations are developing new sustainability qualifications. Stand-alone qualifications can often be more rapidly offered to learners whilst longer term, systemic change to embed ESD across an organisation’s curriculum and broader approach is underway.
Teaching sustainability tool
We have created a list of available qualifications that have sustainability as their primary topic. This is to help educators, curriculum leaders and managers in the FE and Training sector see what qualifications are available for them and search this data to find the right courses for them and their learners.
The resource provides:
a list of the qualifications currently available, organised by the level of the qualification
a summary of total learning hours and guided learning hours for each qualification.
This resource was created using the Ofqual databases. It may be that some qualifications have been missed from our searches. If you think this is the case, or want to add a qualification to our list, please get in touch.
This resource was created using the Ofqual databases. It may be that some qualifications have been missed from our searches. If you think this is the case, or want to add a qualification to our list, please get in touch.