HC Deb 10 January 1990 vol 164 c619W
Dr. Thomas

To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science what initiatives his Department has promoted on the raising of environmental consciousness and environmental protection in schools, colleges and universities.

Mrs. Rumbold

In the course of the last 12 months, Her Majesty's inspectors of schools published "Environmental Education: 5–16", a booklet which offers advice to schools on the planning of environmental education, and the Department, in conjunction with the World Wide Fund for Nature and the Laura Ashley Foundation, launched the environmental enterprise award scheme for schools and colleges. The award scheme aims to encourage children and young people to bring their enterprise and practical ingenuity to bear in protecting or enhancing the environment.

Environmental education has also been indentified as an important theme which should run through the whole school curriculum, including the core and other foundation subjects of the national curriculum.

The natural environment research council, which receives grant-in-aid from the science budget, also played its part in raising young people's consciousness of environmental processes, the role of international scientific research, and Britain's contribution to it by circulating to secondary schools the information booklet "Our Future World".