Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of making learning about the climate emergency and ecological crisis a compulsory part of teaching training courses.

In November 2019, we published the new Initial Teacher Training (ITT) Core Content Framework (CCF) which sets out a core minimum entitlement for all trainees of what should be covered during their teacher training. From September 2020, all ITT courses will have to encompass the full entitlement described in the CCF into their ITT curricula for all subjects and phases.

The CCF is underpinned by robust independently reviewed evidence about what makes good teaching. There is a strong emphasis on the need for training to be subject and phase specific throughout the framework and it is for providers to ensure they carefully craft coherently sequenced curricula that meet the particular needs of their trainees.

The new ITT CCF does not replace the Teachers’ Standards and all ITT must be designed so that teacher trainees can demonstrate that they meet all of the Teachers' Standards at the appropriate level, including Section 3 ‘having a secure knowledge of the relevant subject(s) and curriculum areas’, which can be found here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/665522/Teachers_standard_information.pdf.