Jul 9th, 2013

Victory: climate change will stay in the curriculum

By [email protected]

Margaret Hunter, a geography teacher and 38 Degrees member from Oxfordshire, started a campaign back in March calling on the government to keep climate change in the national curriculum. Over 37,000 of us joined her – and four months later, we’ve won.

Read Margaret’s message below, and if you’ve been inspired to start your own campaign, click here.

“Brilliant news – Michael Gove has abandoned his plans to drop climate change from the curriculum! And the papers are reporting that it was the “widespread support” for our campaign that persuaded him to change his mind.

As a teacher, it means so much to me to know that young people will have the opportunity to understand climate change and how it will affect their lives. It’s only by educating children about what their future will look like that we can give them the chance to shape it for the better.

The outpouring of support for our campaign was incredible. More than 37,000 of us came together with campaigners from the UK Youth Climate Coalition and People & Planet. We signed petitions, wrote letters and took our campaign right to Gove’s Department for Education.

Today proves that when we work together, we can do incredible things. And often all it takes is for one person to step up and take the lead. If there’s something you want to change – whether it’s your local library closing down or something you read in the news today – why not take the lead and start a petition? It only takes a couple of minutes – click here to get started.

Thank you so much for standing with me to do this. It couldn’t have happened without you.

Margaret Hunter,
38 Degrees member and teacher from Oxfordshire”