Natural History GCSE

Flick Drummond Excerpts

Wednesday 1st December 2021 Westminster Hall

[Caroline Ansell (Eastbourne) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of introducing a Natural History GCSE.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. Young people today are caught up in an unhappy paradox. While their concern for the natural world is greater than ever before, their access to nature, to discover its magic and to marvel at its wonder, is much reduced. Earlier this year, a study by Bath University found that almost three quarters of young people in the UK are worried about the future of our planet. The findings from that landmark study highlighted the depth of anxiety felt by young people as a result of climate change and must inspire in us all—politicians, parents and teachers—an imperative to respond.

For me, like many colleagues, those findings reinforced what my parliamentary inbox tells me every week. I receive emails and letters from schoolchildren and young activists concerned about the future of our planet—from climate change and plastic pollution to deforestation and species decline. On Monday this week, I visited Parkland School in Hampden Park, and the very first question put to me by the school council was: what are we doing to address climate change? In fact, this year, messages and petitions from Eastbourne’s young people reached as far as Glasgow and COP26. Their words calling for action were inscribed on templates shaped as birds in flight. I have made it my mission to see those birds next land at No. 10 with the Prime Minister.

However, despite this heightened concern for the environment, many young people have grown up in the absence of nature, estranged from large parts of our precious natural inheritance. There are myriad reasons for this, but a fundamental truth still stands: we are born with an innate yearning for nature—what ecologist Edward Wilson dubbed biophilia. Consider the fascination of a toddler eyeing up a frog or the euphoria of children crunching through autumn leaves and splashing in puddles.

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Meon Valley) (Con)]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Is that not why so many forest schools are starting to crop up all over the countryside?

[Caroline Ansell]

I thank my hon. Friend for that most timely intervention. The forest school movement is to be greatly encouraged. It has inspired a raft of initiatives across the country, including in my constituency. It brings children into that natural environment, where learning is almost by osmosis; it is so natural and incidental. In that environment, children develop a great love of nature, which is so necessary to inspire that desire for further understanding and to learn about respect and protection.

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[Caroline Ansell]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, whose point was well made. This is not an “instead of” qualification; it is potentially an “alongside” or an “as well as”. It complements study across several different disciplines, not least opening up employment prospects, as he described. I go back to that inherent truth that one cannot protect what one does not love. We need to connect with that great love of nature and then reinforce that with the knowledge, insight and skills required to bring conservation work forward. It will be such an important torch for this generation to carry forward.

We have all seen in our schools some of the work that is being done, either in the curriculum or extra-curriculum in the wider life of the school, alongside this heightened concern for the environment. The truth is that eight in 10 children who were interviewed by Natural England in its People and Nature survey agreed that being in nature made them very happy. This generation has not had the same opportunities as previous generations to enjoy our once rich natural environment. Almost half of UK species are in long-term decline, including key species such as the hedgehog, whose numbers are down 95% since the 1950s. We have ploughed up or concreted over large swathes of native habitat in the last century, including 97% of our wildflower meadows.

Access to nature is highly unequal. One in five children living in England’s most deprived areas spend no time at all in the natural environment. The consequence of this precipitous decline is what is known as the shifting baselines phenomenon, whereby successive generations simply become accustomed to ever lower levels of biodiversity, unaware of the greater abundance enjoyed by those who came before. The raucous dawn chorus of a century ago and the splattering of insects on the car windscreen, which were commonplace in our childhoods, are unknown to young people today. One survey found that 83% of five to 16-year-olds could not identify a bumblebee, one in four could not identify a badger or robin, and almost half could not identify brambles, blackberries or bluebells.

Although they have never been so far removed from nature, eight in 10 children and young people in England say that they would like to do more to protect the environment and that doing so is important to them. It is that gulf between, on the one hand, the knowledge and experience of the natural world that are required to protect it and, on the other, the growing concern about ecological decline that a new natural history qualification could help to close.

We know just how important education is if we are to overcome the challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss. Sir David Attenborough has called for a greater role for nature in our schools, highlighting the growing absence of nature in young people’s lives and the negative impact that this is having on their wellbeing and that of the planet.

Sir David’s plea was reinforced earlier this year by the landmark Dasgupta review into the economics of biodiversity, which was commissioned by our Treasury Ministers and published to widespread acclaim internationally. It emphasised the importance of integrating nature studies into the curriculum. Professor Dasgupta argued that this would improve health and wellbeing and—going back to the point made by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon)—empower young people to make informed choices, as well as hold Governments and businesses to account for their impact on the natural world.

With the right knowledge and skills, all young people, whatever their background, can and should contribute to the great national and global effort to halt nature’s decline. After all, that mission is now the law of this land. We are the first country in the world to set a legal deadline for halting nature’s decline by 2030, thanks to the landmark Environment Act 2021, which also contains a suite of measures to clean up our air and waterways, reduce waste and increase biodiversity.

Recognising the essential contribution that schools, teachers and young people can make to protecting our environment, the Education Secretary launched the Government’s climate and sustainability strategy for schools at COP26. I commend the Government for their leadership and ambition, and teachers and students in Eastbourne will relish the chance to increase biodiversity in their playgrounds and contribute to rewilding efforts in our community—indeed, they are already doing so.

It would be most remiss of me were I not to mention at this point the latest members of Parkland, where llamas now join ducks and chickens, or of West Rise Junior School, which now hosts water buffalo, which find their way into every element of the primary curriculum, from art through to mathematics and beyond.

The Eastbourne Schools Partnership, which is now the Coastal Schools Partnership following the inclusion of schools from Seaford and Bexhill, is a group of partner schools that have formed the Reconnect Group, which meets to discuss ways to help young people re-engage with the natural environment. It was inspired by a similar group called the Millennium Kids, an Australian group that it linked up with during Eastbourne’s Making Natural History conference in November 2020. The Reconnect Group is working with the Eden Project in Eastbourne as it looks to develop Jubilee Way as part of the Queen’s Green Canopy project and make it somewhere where young people can do exactly that: reconnect with the environment. The group will be walking Jubilee Way this weekend, as part of the research, so that pupils can contribute ideas to Sir Tim Smit and his team for different learning zones along the way. It is a 10-year project. Good things are happening.

What is more, the Government’s Skills and Post-16 Education Bill will help plug the green skills gap. I and colleagues in the Conservative Environment Network believe that they could go even further by setting a requirement in law for the Secretary of State to publish a green skills strategy.

It is within that context—a world-leading Environment Act, a stronger emphasis on climate change in the national curriculum and a green skills revolution—that the Government could also look to introduce a natural history GCSE. It would be a part of the whole—a jigsaw piece. It would demonstrate to schools, students and parents the high value we place on study in this area.

The proposed GCSE was developed by Cambridge Assessment and OCR following an extensive consultation that received more than 2,000 responses. I am pleased to say that the Eastbourne Schools Partnership sat on the strategic advisory group. The results are most impressive and very compelling: 94% of the young people who responded said that they would have liked to study the GCSE, and 96% of UK teachers and educators who responded were interested in teaching the qualification.

The natural history GCSE would reflect progression within the existing curriculum. It builds on nature observation content in key stages 1 to 3, providing a good capstone assessment at 16 that brings together those threads in a way that existing courses in geography and biology cannot.

[Mrs Drummond]

Is there any evidence from the people who responded that young people would take up natural history instead of science and geography? Would it be an alternative or an add-on? The number of GCSEs that most people can take is limited.

[Caroline Ansell]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight one of the challenges around curriculum choices. Of course, with every choice there is an opportunity cost. However, this additional, optional GCSE would complement any choices, be they arts or science choices. The curriculum is designed to provide a broad and balanced education in the core, so there would be no learning loss—the science component is already guaranteed and safeguarded. This new GCSE would provide an opportunity for extended study into the natural world, with all the benefits that could bring. Of course, as I said earlier, it is quite a mix of a GCSE, in that it rests on several different disciplines, so it is a good all-round GCSE choice to complement any combination of subjects that students might choose.

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[Mrs Flick Drummond (Meon Valley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Caroline Ansell) for bringing this important debate to this Chamber, and I bow to her expertise as a former teacher and director of studies.

My hon. Friend may know that I never miss the opportunity to say that GCSEs no longer have any place in our assessment system. I think that we should have a 14-to-18 curriculum that could include the topic of natural history, as well as other subjects, giving skills and knowledge to young people. Employers, universities, parents and young people themselves are looking for a curriculum that sets them up for future careers. I believe that public examinations at 16, at which 49.9% of young people fail English and maths, are not acceptable.

[Caroline Ansell]

I thought I was being bold in proposing the introduction of one GCSE, but my hon. Friend has taken that proposal and raised me a revolution. I am sure that teachers everywhere will admire the breadth of her ambition. I think that where she and I agree is that this would include a component or a topic dealing with natural history. Does she therefore agree that this needs to be given a greater profile, greater prominence and greater coverage, and that a greater emphasis needs to be placed on the field studies mentioned by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), in order for this new, revolutionary education system to meet the needs of this generation of students?

[Mrs Drummond]

I absolutely agree with that, and I will come on to it later. We need to look again at our curriculum to ensure that young people are not alienated from education, and what my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne has said about natural history may be part of that. I am not against exams or other rigorous methods of assessment, but at present I do not believe that the existing system is working. I am looking forward to the beginning of next year, when several commissions will report on the subject of the new assessment system.

Turning to the OCR proposal for a new GCSE in natural history, the environment is a very important subject—possibly the most important—for all young people. Like my hon. Friend, when I meet children and young people, that topic is always at the forefront of their conversations and questions, and their letters and emails are all deeply concerned about the environment. In 2021, Global Action Plan found that 89% of young people aged seven to 18 said that caring for the natural world was quite or very important, and teachers would like there to be more in the curriculum about climate change, although they need more training and information about it.

As such, I agree with teachers and pupils that natural history should be an integral part of the national curriculum starting at key stage 1, but in fact it is already there. As the OCR report mentions, children begin studying natural history at an early age, from key stage 1 to key stage 4 in science. Science covers many of the subject aims and learning outcomes that OCR has put in its proposal for a natural history GCSE. For instance, in year 1, pupils are taught to use their local environment to explore and question how plants grow, looking at plant structures, using equipment to identify plants and describe them and record how they change over time. Year 2 looks at living things and their habitats: pupils explore and compare the differences between things that are living, things that are dead and things that have never been alive; identify that most living things live in habitats—including microhabitats—to which they are suited; and describe how different habitats provide for the basic needs of different kinds of animals and plants and how they depend on each other, including food chains. Pupils in years 3 and 4 perform a range of scientific experiments and observations on natural history, looking at naturally occurring patterns and relationships and using data, and that continues in years 5 and 6, increasing the complexity of what those pupils are learning, mostly based on natural history. As such, by key stage 4—GCSE level—science already covers nearly everything that is in this new GCSE.

I worry that bringing in this new GCSE would dilute the rigorous science GCSE by diverting young people into another, similar course that is far narrower than the existing science one. They would miss out on many elements of science, such as chemistry and physics, which contribute to young people’s general knowledge and would help their understanding of our environment. Geography is only compulsory up to key stage 3—although, of course, I would change that if I were going to design a curriculum from 14 to 18—but the geography GCSE also covers much of what is in this natural history proposal, and dovetails well with the science GCSE. OCR states that it would use

“the same underlying rationale as the models in GCSE Science and Geography, which support rich practical and field work, but do not use over-structured practical and field work to contribute marks to the grade. This avoids boring work which could easily be ‘gamed’ or leads to poor-quality assessment.”

That is a really odd comment, and I hope it does not mean that OCR believes that this boring work is already happening. If it is, why on earth are examination boards not making it more interesting for science and geography?

OCR also says in its proposal that the new GCSE would not comprise

“a redundant overlap with other disciplines and discipline areas”.

I would challenge that: I believe that it would, and I think that my hon. Friend agrees with me, because she mentioned that in her speech. There is not enough time in such a broad GCSE, which contains geography, biology, geology and so on, to incorporate rigorous knowledge of each of those subjects. Could it be seen as an easier alternative? I have read the proposal carefully, but I am concerned that people will take natural history as an alternative and therefore miss out on important and valuable study areas. However, I agree that we must include much more about the environment and our natural history in the curriculum. Environmental literacy should be developed across a range of subjects. Learning about our natural world should not be limited to one subject alone.

[Caroline Ansell]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mrs Drummond]

Of course—I knew that my hon. Friend would say that.

[Caroline Ansell]

I thank my hon. Friend, who raises some valid concerns that need to be addressed and, indeed, have been addressed in other places. One thing that I seek to understand more is the important idea of environmental literacy that she describes. Throughout the curriculum, there is much emphasis on language and communication as well as mathematics and numeracy. She describes early experiences extending all the way through the key stages. Is it not rather odd that, when we come to key stage 4, there is not that same continuity and, therefore, opportunity for students to demonstrate environmental literacy in a way that further education institutions or employers could recognise?

[Mrs Drummond]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. However, environmental literacy should be not just limited to science and geography but seen through English. We can think of a whole lot of poetry about nature.

[Caroline Ansell]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mrs Drummond]

My hon. Friend is a language teacher, not an English teacher.

[Caroline Ansell]

Indeed—a French teacher. One of the most exciting and potentially dynamic elements of the new GCSE is that it goes beyond a purely scientific approach where it might rest on biology or even geography and extends to our understanding of the natural world as manifested in art, music and literature. There is a rich inheritance therein inspired by our natural world. The new GCSE does everything that my hon. Friend suggests.

[Mrs Drummond]

In that case, I am even more concerned that the rigorousness of a science—chemistry, physics and biology—would be completely missed out. I fear that people would take the natural history GCSE as an alternative to a science or geography GCSE and that those subjects would be lost. Environmental literacy should permeate every single subject, which would have the same effect as doing a natural history GCSE without the subject being limited to just that course.

[Caroline Ansell]

I have one final point. Learning is powerful and threaded, as my hon. Friend describes, through the curriculum. Indeed, that is how students first acquired the skills necessary to understand information technology: it was delivered via other subjects. However, we came to recognise that IT has its own standing and should have its own status and qualification. A student can go further, deeper and wider in the specific and discrete study of IT, even though it is encountered, encouraged and supported in every other curriculum area.

[Mrs Drummond]

That is true, but the reality is that fewer people are doing IT at GCSE, probably because it permeates through all the other subjects. That again illustrates why natural history needs to be part of the curriculum. Perhaps examination boards could design better examinations and curriculums rather than bring in a new GCSE that I believe would lead to young people missing out on much knowledge covered by science and geography courses.

Of course, I would much prefer to incorporate environmental literacy into a 14-to-18 curriculum, which would allow for a greater depth of study and development of skills. However, I am incredibly grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing forward this important debate.

[Geraint Davies (in the Chair)]

I invite Tulip Siddiq to respond on behalf of the official Opposition.