The PGCE Secondary Green Conference initiative is an annual event for student teachers, where students from multiple secondary PGCE subjects convene to host a day during which they address climate justice issues. The initiative received a 2024 Making a Difference Award for its outstanding teaching innovation in social responsibility.

The aims of the day are to develop student teachers’ understanding and confidence in dealing with climate justice issues. This annual conference has been established for four years and has been growing in scope each year.

Andy Howes, Science tutor and Programme Director of Secondary PGCE at the University of Manchester, said: “The conference creates a focus on climate justice for trainee teachers and staff. In the context of a very busy Secondary curriculum in schools, it would be possible to engage in education of teachers without any significant mention of climate and environmental crisis. This is because there is relatively little on this issue in the national curriculum, in most subjects. But at a time when the planet is warming as quickly as it ever has, with huge damage being done to livelihoods and ecosystems locally and across the globe, this is not a sustainable educational position.

“The conference originated over four years ago with a group of activist trainees, impatient with the programme as it then was. With the help of a local NGO, the Manchester Environmental Education Network, and with a student-led organisation called Teach the Future, we have been seeking to respond in an increasingly adequate way to this impatience.”

He continued, talking about the impact of the PGCE Conference: “Alumni have returned to inspire the next cohorts of trainee teachers. As a result, we have seen trainees become more involved; finding ways to bring issues of climate justice and environmental crisis into their English lessons, Maths lessons, Science lessons, Geography lessons. But we’ve also seen and encouraged trainees to take local action. At the most recent conference in January this year, trainees all signed up for an environmental activity during the afternoon – gardening in Whitworth Park, hiring bikes for a first-time bike ride, organising a clothes swap, learning the arts of lobbying, measuring heat loss from university buildings. We want to keep moving knowledge and commitment into educational practice.”

When asked about winning a Making a Difference Award, Howes said “The key impact of interest to us is the visibility of this initiative across the university. There is a lot to be gained by networking and linking in an area where we have some developing knowledge and experience, but where our sphere of action and knowledge is limited. We would like to continue to grow this space and this focus to encourage others and to help many teachers towards practical commitment and action with young people. We think of schools as intergenerational learning environments, and climate justice is nothing if not an intergenerational demand.”

For more information:

• Watch a short film about the PGCE Secondary Green Conference
• Read the 2022 conference blog
• Contact andrew.j.howes@manchester.ac.uk or ian.morgan@manchester.ac.uk, if you are interested in contributing in any way