Crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change and food and water scarcity have impacted globally. South Africa has been subjected to inclement weather conditions and flooding, affecting school attendance and resulting in school closures due to storm damage. Based on the urgency of climate education to mitigate the impact of climate change on learning, the DBE is consolidating its response to minimise the impact on learning and teaching.

Ms Cheryl Weston, Director for Learning Recovery and Curriculum Strengthening, explained that the DBE is currently finalising the draft National Strategy for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in South Africa, indicating how ESD knowledge, experience, skills and expertise is harnessed optimally, given the robust policy environment across sectors. ESD advances all 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with Target 4.7 of SDG 4 on Education committing all education departments to integrate ESD into the curriculum by 2030.

The 1995 White Paper on Education and Training ‘principle’ has been adopted and adapted as the overall Goal for the ESD strategy in South Africa stating that, By 2030, education for sustainable development, involving an inter-disciplinary, integrated and active approach to learning, is a vital element of all levels and programmes of the education and training system, creating and maintaining environmentally literate and active citizens, ensuring that all South Africans present and future, enjoy a decent quality of life through the sustainable use of resources.

Agreements and alignment must therefore be in place between key affected national government departments, setting out clear goals, targets, roles and responsibilities. Effective ESD coordination structures must be in place to encourage, facilitate and manage the rollout of ESD in South Africa and to support the development of a detailed sector rollout plan for implementation along with measurable and verifiable results, including reviewing and revising the strategy where necessary.

“ESD is a cross-cutting priority that has always been part of the curriculum post democracy, but relegated to a few subjects such as Geography; Natural Sciences; Life Sciences; Life Skills/Life Orientation; Tourism; and Consumer studies. However, content, knowledge and skills are patchy and lacks coherence and relevance. As part of the broader curriculum strengthening process currently underway, the ESD definition and understanding are being expanded and will be incorporated across subjects where it fits naturally, along with improved coherence and alignment through a thematic process, under the relevant areas: Healthy Environments, Healthy People; Climate Action; Water Security; Land, Biodiversity and Ecosystems; Waste and Circular Economies; Sustainable Food Systems; and Just energy transitions.

ESD concepts, competences and values will be integrated at each stage of the curriculum from ECD to the FET Phase to deepen and expand contextual focus, whilst not losing touch with local South African / African contexts and environments. The next steps in the ESD implementation phase will include the development of lesson plans, lesson sets and Learning and Teaching Support Material (LTSM). Teacher development must align with Fundisa for Change for strengthening teacher development; strengthening the online teacher portal; induction of novice teachers; sign language; digital and remote learning and reading and numeracy. Lessons learned from COVID-19 and recent climate effects are necessary for an Emergency / Disaster curriculum to adapt to emergency circumstances,” Ms Weston concluded.