Environmental awareness in schools’ curriculum proposed

The Department of Environment on Wednesday handed over a series of proposals to the National Centre for Educational Research Development (NCERD) to introduce environmental topics in the current school curriculum.
Since October last year, a team of specialists would have converged to examine the current syllabus used from Grades One to Nine and ways in which these topics can be incorporated into daily lessons.

Four areas were mainly targeted, namely: agriculture and forestry, biodiversity, climate and land geography in subject areas: English language, social studies, agricultural science and integrated science.
Environmental Policy and Education Coordinator of the Department, Alvin Doris stated that the idea was to determine whether there was comprehensive environmental coverage across these subjects. As expected, lessons on pertinent environmental issues were lacking.
“As you can imagine, there was little to none because our school’s curriculum had not been revised in part for decades…We thought that it was incumbent upon us, being the State agency with overarching mandate for environmental governance, to contribute to that process somehow…We saw that the lack of environmental coverage provided us an opportunity to propose what could be infused,” Doris indicated.
He acknowledged the fact that students are sometimes burdened with numerous topics to cover before the end of the school year. Hence, they inserted information where it was relevant in existing topics.
“The complaint has always been that the schools’ curriculum is so packed already so we had to be mindful of how much we propose, we had to strategically think about infusion rather than altogether wholesale introduction of new topics,” the Coordinator pointed out.
Guyana has taken up the mantle of executing the Rio Conventions, namely on Biodiversity, Climate Change and Desertification.
For this, Rio Mainstreaming Project Manager, Michelle Klass explained that a four-year project, slated to conclude next year, was employed to monitor the implementation of the Convention and strengthen technical capacities. Now, the Rio Convention and other environmental issues will be taught at a different level.
“The objective is to strengthen technical capacities for mainstreaming and monitoring achievements of the Rio Convention….This important exercise will see our children benefitting from an updated curriculum that incorporates not only the Rio Convention that the project is focusing on but other aspects of the environment including our Green State Development Strategy,” Klass asserted.
In receiving the revised syllabus, Director of NCERD, Jennifer Cumberbatch said they will review these suggestions before introducing them in the curriculum. This initiative has been welcomed by educators and both public and private institutions.
“Having a meaningful curriculum is essential to a child’s education, life and thus, to a whole nation…We are thankful for the tangible way in which the Office of Climate Change has supported us by these suggested inclusions in the curriculum. I’ve seen a bit of it and recognised that some of it is really good but we have not looked at it in its entirety,” the NCERD Director noted.
Through its curriculum reform project, the Education Ministry had introduced a reformed curriculum in schools across the country, through a pilot programme which included space for any modifications.
Assistant Chief Education Officer, Carol Benn made this announcement earlier this year, where she also informed that a new timetable would’ve accompanied the syllabus in 115 primary schools. Both were implemented as pilot projects.