Climate Change and our Collaborative Pledge Forum 2

After an opening welcome and introductory remarks from our Executive Director Sue Betts, focusing on goal one of our pledge ‘Curriculum development for ‘green’ courses’ we welcomed our first guest speaker Jacquie Mutter, Chief Executive at OCN London who gave us an update on what OCN London is doing to implement the Climate Change Pledge highlighting their four key aims including making available qualifications that support the development of ‘green skills’ and progression to ‘green jobs’ across different sectors and the steps they are taking to achieve them highlighting an importance to review existing and new qualifications and identify those gaps. Jacquie also gave an update on where they are in terms of progress with their Access to HE Diplomas and lower level qualifications. We then heard from Geoffrey Makstutis, Subject Lead for Construction, Art & Design, Creative Media Production at Pearson who spoke on Pearson’s work around climate change through curriculum development focussing mainly on Sustainability within BTEC Higher Nationals highlighting how they integrate sustainability into their qualifications through individual units and curriculum aspects. Lastly, focusing on goal one, Andrew Jones, Director at Linking London then went through some mapping of undergraduate and postgraduate ‘Green’ provision in Greater London. Finding 6 HE providers offering 9 courses in this area for undergraduates and finding 15 HE providers and approximately 40 courses, a significant increase, for postgraduate courses. In terms of other qualifications such as level 3, Andrew found some courses that include green elements embedded within them and other short courses. Andrew also highlighted the repository on the Partner Area where we have been collecting any useful resources and information on this topic such as recent publications, useful websites and the good practise work of our partners.  

Following this we looked at the second goal of the pledge ‘Developing progression routes to/from those courses’. We welcomed Professor Stefaan Simons, Emeritus Professor of Energy Systems at Brunel University London who presented on Progression from FE to HE in Climate Change Skills Development at the West London Institute of Technology and an update on the West London Recovery Green Skills Working Group, the impact of Covid-19 and the importance of a recovery and reskilling. Stefaan also briefly talked about how universities can involve FE staff and students in research in this area as the IoT is developing a learning factory approach around construction.  

Sue Betts then highlighted the Progression resources on the Linking London website and the Climate Change Progression Agreement form for partners to express interest in pursuing Progression Agreements with partners in the Linking London partnership.  

Focussing on the third goal ‘Staff exchanges and secondments’ and how to start a buddy request/offer via Linking London we have also produced The Climate Change Buddying Exchange Form for partners interested in finding out more about colleagues in other sectors or in other institutions. 

The event closed with looking forward to what's next and the holding of another forum to look at the final two goals ‘Developing and sharing good practice in institutional environmental policies’ and ‘Working with other stakeholders in London’. With possible speakers from the London Councils and GLA, and also hearing from our partners on what they are doing in these two  areas. 

The group were thanked for their contributions throughout the morning. 

Presentations, recording and discussion notes 

To view the recording, presentations and notes from the day please click here. This link will take you to the Linking London SharePoint Partners' Area. You must be a Linking London member to access this section of the website. If you do not have access, please email info@linkinglondon.ac.uk.  

We are pleased to say we now have 3 partners who have signed the Linking London Collaborative Pledge – OCN London, West London College and Pearson. If your institution would like to join and sign the Pledge, it is available here.