Education Policy Outlook 2023

Executive summary

Environmental sustainability is a key global megatrend influencing education and training policy in 2024, alongside digitalisation, and equity, inclusion and diversity. There is no inherent trade-off between achieving environmental sustainability and addressing other megatrends. The Declaration on Building Equitable Societies Through Education (2022) recognised ‘the unique potential’ of education 'to build strong foundations for equitable, inclusive, sustainable democratic societies’.

Drawing on the OECD’s Framework of Responsiveness and Resilience in Education Policy and data for 36 education systems from the OECD National Survey for Comparative Policy Analysis 2023: Empowering All Learners to go Green (EPO Survey 2023), three priorities emerge for policy makers in 2024 to foster greener and fairer societies.

1. Translate learners’ environmental awareness into action

Individuals’ daily choices can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 70%. However, many systems are prioritising external factors over learners’ internal agency. In the EPO Survey 2023, 57% of participating education ministries made encouraging learners to translate environmental awareness into action a top priority, but just 26% focused on developing learners’ agency. Education systems are promoting environmental agency through dedicated time and space for active pedagogies, student voice structures, and establishing a culture of collective action.

Some lessons

• Integrate efforts to promote environmental action into formal, pre-existing structures. Changing everyday professional and institutional practice is key. Education systems can incentivise change by integrating related processes for environmental action into existing management, teaching or institutional structures.

• Better clarify and communicate the co-benefits of strengthening environmental agency and engagement. Education systems can build support by emphasising the co-benefits of environmental action for wider outcomes. This requires generating evidence and strategically communicating it to different audiences.

• Expand the scope to nurture environmental action across all education levels and sectors. Education systems should identify where existing school-focused efforts for environmental action can be adapted to include other education levels and sectors. They can develop new efforts tailored to the specific needs of underrepresented parts of the system too.

• Mobilise new cross-sectoral resource streams to foster environmental action at scale. Fostering environmental action requires long-term, resource-intensive efforts. To alleviate education budgets and capitalise on wider expertise, education systems can establish partnerships with and beyond environment ministries.

2. Provide all learners with experiences to help them shape the green economy

Education must go beyond ‘green’ curricula to support all learners to address real-world problems using diverse disciplines. In the EPO Survey 2023, 71% of education ministries prioritised the former; 46% the latter. Some promote transversal competencies through active learning, also focusing on underrepresented groups. Others aim to nurture learning cultures and external partnerships.

Some lessons

• Leverage digital technologies to ensure equal access to practical experiences. Technology can help to provide practical experiences for the green economy in rural or remote areas, such as through online learning for enrichment and work-readiness activities.

• Strengthen coordination and anticipation mechanisms to ensure green skills supply. Addressing skills bottlenecks and ensuring a long-term green supply requires a coordinated strategy. This means working with actors outside education.

• Monitor the impact of green skills interventions on learners’ outcomes over time. Education systems can monitor the medium and long-term impact of interventions to generate evidence of what works.

• Engage parents as key partners to challenge stereotypes and misconceptions. Parents and carers are key in supporting learning and nurturing aspirations. Engaging with them as equal partners in learning can help alleviate concerns and challenge misconceptions.

• Strengthen the role of institutional leaders to foster green collaboration and innovation. Leaders need to understand and value the contribution of their institution to the green transition, driving innovation and collaboration within and beyond it. Education systems can offer them dedicated professional learning activities for this.

3. Position education as a strategic sector for the transition to greener societies

Education shapes individuals’ behaviours, values, and purpose. It inspires collective action, influences local and global economies, and drives policy agendas. Yet, while 74% of participating education ministries prioritised collaborating with ministries of environment, fewer than 25% reported the same with other key actors (e.g. ministries, industry, business and employers).

Some lessons

• Prioritise elevating the strategic importance of the sector for the transition to greener societies. Policy makers must potentialise education’s role in the green transition ensuring high-level political and financial backing to facilitate exchanges with other sectors.

• Align priorities and collaborations by mapping ongoing and desired greening partnerships. Education ministries should map existing and desired collaborations against system-level goals for greater efficiency and impact. With increasing polycrises stemming from climate change, identifying associated priorities is also key.

• Build sectoral capacity to understand the challenges and opportunities of driving transformative change. The education sector must enhance its capacity to comprehend the evidence behind the transition to greener and fairer societies exploring options for training and research and infrastructure, as well as exchanging on knowledge and data.

• Examine which incentives and conditions facilitate collaboration for green transformation. Governments should assess the conditions that hinder or enable education actors’ engagement in the transition to greener and fairer societies. This includes revising existing instruments as well as the resources needed.

• Look forward and look backward to ensure broader societal relevance and impact for the green transformation. Enhancing foresight and anticipatory governance mechanisms can help to identify where future collaborations could be most helpful, while evaluating inter-sectoral collaborations can strengthen the relevance and impact of future efforts.