Hannah-Jane Kenton (11 years old), Melanie Harwood (Founder eduCCate Global) and Angus Mackay (UNITAR), announce the launch of The Climate Change Teacher Course, COP24, Katowice, Poland, 2018.

In the beginning…

At COP 24 in Katowice, Poland [November 2018] Harwood Education and UNITAR held a joint press conference to announce a non-financial agreement that would allow Harwood Education to access 5 of UNITAR’s climate change trainings, adapt them for and offer them to teachers for free.

Live press conference, COP 24 Katowice, Poland, 2018

Live press conference
COP 24 Katowice,
November 2018, Poland

Introducing the Climate Change Teacher Course. Hannah-Jane Kenton, age 11 years, Melanie Harwood (Founder of eduCCate Global) and Angus Mackay (Director of Planet UNITAR) announce the Climate Change Teacher Course to be trialled in 80 Schools in England.

Official launch of the Climate Change Teacher Course
April 22, 2019, UK

“A Climate Change Teacher in every school” Campaign. Hannah-Jane Kenton, age 11 years, launched the trial of the Climate Change Teacher Course in England with a social media campaign and began with her own school.

The official launch of the eduCCate Global Climate Change Teacher Course, April 22, 2019

These courses still form the foundational training within our Bronze Award. Harwood Education, covered the costs of the video editing, voice overs and supporting documentation, marketing and social media and invested to create a joint portal that could handle the volume of teachers who wanted to take the teacher training.

eduCCate Global was launched on Earth Day, April 22, 2019. By the end of that year, 329K teachers in 43 countries had taken and completed the first Climate Change Teacher Training in the world.

In November 2019, Melanie Harwood was invited to speak at The Climate Change in Education Conference in Dubai. It was also an opportunity to visit a school there where every teacher was a Certified Climate Change Teacher and to meet key stakeholders in education in the Middle East region. Insert video of Mel speaking at the conference Melanie was joined on this trip to the UAE by The Guardian Visual Feature Team and the Leadership Team (Education) from Hammersmith & Fulham Council, United Kingdom to visit a school in Dubai and a UK Delegation of Education Leaders. Here’s that coverage.

The Climate Change in Education Conference
Melanie Harwood, November 2019,
Dubai, UAE

We learned a lot

Almost immediately we began to hear from teachers. They loved the climate change training, but they still didn’t feel confident about teaching climate change to their students.

With Fiona Cowan, head teacher, Bolsover Infants and Pre-School, Derbyshire, United Kingdom, our founder Melanie Harwood built a two-hour inset training, “How to teach climate change”. We also found our best climate change teachers were craving head teacher and peer support in their schools.

And they wanted schemes of work to support them in engaging and activating the staff and students. At the same time, we realized that teaching teachers about mitigation and adaptation was not enough.

We needed to find a way to support them in incremental, step-wise learning that would help them continue to build their capacity to teach climate transition and system transformation.

And perhaps most importantly we realized that we needed to ensure impeccable safeguarding and would not be able to do it using the original model.

At COP 25 in Madrid, Spain [November 2019] eduCCate Global announced the end of the first phase program and our new Awards Program.

In 2020, we launched the Bronze Award. The new Award was designed around a Sustainability and Climate Change Leadership Team and included the 5 teacher-adapted UNITAR courses and the “How to teach Climate Change”.

Results – Climate Change Teacher Course
Presented by Asha Alexander
COP 25, Madrid, 2019

Melanie Harwood (Founder of eduCCate Global) and Asha Alexander (Headteacher, TKGS) announce the results and feedback on the Climate Change Teacher Course and discuss the launch of the eduCCate Global Awards.

Delivering the Climate Change Curriculum in every school
to achieve an Industrial Strategy,
COP25, Madrid, 2019

Stephen Cowan, Leader of Hammersmith & Fulham Council, London, United Kingdom, announced how his Industrial Strategy will be achieved, by upskilling all teachers to deliver the Climate Change Curriculum in every school.

We officially closed our first phase program on December 31st, 2019.

eduCCate Global, thanks to Harwood Education, continued to sponsor schools into the new Bronze Award until mid-2020 when it was clear that this model was not sustainable. This phase of development was an incredible time of learning and development for our Awards program.

In 2020, we launched the Bronze Award. The new Award was designed around a Sustainability and Climate Change Leadership Team and included the 5 teacher adapted UNITAR courses and the “How to teach Climate Change”.

By March, we began testing the Carbon Footprint Buster Challenge scheme of work to the Bronze Award. The original concept was created by Lisa Pugh and then built into a scalable scheme of work. The feedback was so positive that it is now a key element of the Bronze Award.

In this early phase, we were able to offer the Bronze Award for free to schools but by June 2020 we realized we needed a more sustainable model. During this phase we matched 1000 UK and 1000 global south schools to take the Bronze Award training together. We found that this virtual format increased learning for both teachers and students.

“Working with eduCCate global has accelerated our work in climate education . We have benefitted from global connections , they are at the forefront of curriculum innovation which will transform the opportunities for young people in Hammersmith & Fulham”

Jan Parnell

Director of Education and Children, Hammersmith & Fulham Council

In addition, we:

Realized that schools and parents were struggling due to COVID restrictions. We created parent-carer instructions for our popular scheme of work, Mini-Climate Readers, and tested them with 104 families through our partner school Bolsover Infants and Pre-School, Derbyshire.
Designed and tested the Silver Award
Piloted the Carbon Literacy Teacher Training with teachers from Holme Grange School [insert link to Gold Award school]. The program was another game changer. Originally planned to be part of the Gold Award, today it is the centerpiece of the Silver. In March, 2021 we held the very first eduCCate Global Carbon Literacy Teacher (Certified) Awards Ceremony.
Continued to build and test schemes of work and blended learning e-packages to support both primary and secondary schools in strengthening their pupils’ climate change literacy including Critical Thinking Games [with Robert Cobbald – now part of the Bronze], Transition Engineering [with Prof Susan Krumdieck] that will form a golden thread throughout our Awards programs leading to pathways to higher education, Radical Renewal [with Henry Mintzberg on Rebalancing Society] which will be part of the Platinum Award and thanks to our partnership with Holme Grange School we’ve been able to test Carbon Literacy scheme of work for secondary students and lots more.