By Ellen Bradley
I’ve always felt like a bit of a fraud when it comes to nature. I go out on a walk with my nature-nerdy friends and am humbled by their incredible ability to identify the different species around us, while I clumsily thumb through field guides trying to catch up on whether it was a holly blue or a common blue butterfly.
But then I’ll hang out with friends I’ve made through a different part of my life and realise that even my mediocre nature knowledge is not the norm. I remember walking through a woodland with a very intelligent friend who I was studying biology with at university at the time. They pointed to a tree and asked me what type it was. I laughed and kept walking, assuming they were joking. “No, really, what is that tree?”
“It’s an oak”, I answered.
A Subject Left in Limbo
Our education system is failing. Failing to give young people the chance to understand the nature on their doorstep. Failing to give society the foundational knowledge needed to care for and protect the natural world. The Natural History GCSE is a unique and hugely exciting opportunity to level the playing field, to give generations of people the chance to discover more about their surroundings.
Delays Hurt Future Generations
The campaign for the GCSE, led by Mary Colwell, received cross-party support and everyone from students to mental health professionals, business leaders to farmers have enthusiastically lended their support, calling for this new subject to enter our classrooms. In April 2023, the Department for Education announced that the GCSE would be taught in schools from September 2025. That deadline has now been missed and first teaching in 2026 was promised. Months after this disappointing delay was announced, we are now concerned that it could go on even longer.
The new Labour government has labelled the GCSE as a Conservative initiative and says that it needs to be reassessed as part of the wider curriculum review. As Colwell says in a recent interview with The Guardian, “this could take years, it’s a huge piece of work”.
Cross-Party Support Ignored
At a time when we should be training teachers and preparing schools to introduce the new subject, the GCSE is sitting in limbo, gathering dust on a Westminster desk. There is huge support for this subject and an overwhelming need for it. It is not a tory initiative, it is a cross-party initiative with cross-sector backing. Each delay that the Department for Education and the Labour government put in front of the Natural History GCSE is a failure.
UK Youth for Nature will be joining Mary and many others in calling on the Labour government to deliver on their promise and to introduce the Natural History GCSE without delay.
If you’re a young person wanting to get involved in campaigns like this, and others centred around nature recovery in the UK, why not join our community?