A change of perspective

The days of geography lessons just being about rivers and mountains, maths lessons about sums, and PE about chasing a ball, are officially over. The revised secondary curriculum coming into force in England this September and across the UK in the coming year will be asking teachers in all subject areas to introduce a consciousness of global issues into their teaching. The aim is to develop a more sophisticated understanding of how our actions affect the rest of the planet, and how what happens elsewhere influences our lives at home, school and work.

The idea of embedding a global dimension into the curriculum has been cooking since 1997, when Clare Short, then secretary of state for international development, brought out a white paper that sought to mobilise support for development in the UK. In it, she stated that every child should be educated about development issues.

Then it was seen as a bolt-on to standard lessons, but the Department for International Development's (DfID's) aim over the past decade has been to get a focus on international development running through all curricular activity - like writing through a stick of rock. It has backed this up by funding numerous awarenessraising programmes across UK schools.

But many schools already run fundraising activities and fair trade tuck shops, arrange special assemblies on international issues and incorporate development understanding into a proportion of assessed coursework, so why does the government view education for global citizenship as so important that it should now want it to underlie all aspects of teaching?

In fact, one in four jobs relate to international trade. "We've got to accept that children are growing up into a global workforce and a global economy," says Mick Waters, curriculum director at the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA). "While employers need English and maths and soft skills, they also need [employees with] an understanding of the way the global economy takes place."

Social benefits

But there's a wider and much more socially laudable objective. According to a spokesman for Department for Children, Schools and Families, "Learning about the global dimension can also provide schools with opportunities to promote community cohesion and, in partnership with families, develop skills that will enable young people to combat injustice, prejudice and discrimination."

Embedding a global dimension in the curriculum enables schools to make links between local and global issues, says the spokesman: "It provides young people with opportunities to critically examine their own values and attitudes and appreciate and contrast them with other cultures."

DfID's slightly different take veers more towards developing in young people a sense of responsibility towards countries and people whose lives the developed world has most detrimentally affected. At a political level, as the interdependence of economies and environments becomes more visible, DfID argues that developing a generation of citizens who, for example, have an understanding of why tax money is invested in development, means that their consent, or otherwise, will be more informed.

This approach all sounds very worthy, but is it really going to be much fun in the classroom? "Young people in the main are very interested in the contribution they can make to the issues on the planet," says Waters of the QCA, which led the consultation process for the new secondary curriculum, and is currently working on a review of primary education.

"When youngsters see that what they do in lessons has real purpose - that it afffects our planet - their attitude to work, their motivation and their emotional and social development benefits hugely."

DfID has been working with the devolved governments to encourage them to adopt a more global approach in their classrooms. In Wales, where a revised secondary and primary curriculum was published in January, the marrying of sustainable development and global citizenship at a strategic level is well under way, to the point where it is now a compulsory part of teacher training courses. And it goes beyond just schools - the global dimension has to be incorporated into youth work, further education and work-based learning, higher education and adult and continuing education.

"It's no longer about sticking bits into geography lessons, or 'oh yes, we buy our food locally'," says Claire Fowler, who leads on sustainable development and global citizenship for the Welsh assembly's Department for Children, Education, Lifelong Learning and Skills. "The curriculum documents that have come out here are really strong now, so enthusiastic teachers with passion and ideas really have legitimacy.

"We're trying to move on from individual initiatives. Some are brilliant, but if they remain single initiatives by an individual teacher, we're going to stay where we are. We need to work towards holistic whole-school planning. It needs to be held in esteem by the headteacher and senior management."

New thinking

The overall message is that incorporating the global dimension doesn't need to be dauntingly onerous, but it does need to inform teachers' thinking in all their curricular preparation. It could be as simple as asking where the football used in PE lessons comes from - a sweatshop or a fair trade workshop? Or a major cross-curricular project involving history classes looking at diets in 16th-century Europe and Africa compared with today; geography classes exploring where food comes from; economics lessons spent working out the food miles of a kiwi compared with a carrot; or personal, social and health education sessions spent working with the catering staff to reduce the environmental impact of school lunches.

It's a different way of thinking about how to teach and, for pupils, injects a fresh dimension to subjects across the curriculum.